A Review of Organizational Factors and Maturity Measures for System Safety Analysis

摘要

System safety applications include mission assurance elements of accident prevention, detection, containment, and recovery, which differ from the project risks of cost and schedule impact widely covered in the risk management literature. However, as with project risk, system safety can be significantly affected both during design and operation by organizational factors potentially limiting adequate risk analysis. The comprehensive literature review in this paper emphasizes factors within organizations, such as bias and self-blinding, with potential for negative influence on analysis of system safety. Measures to establish a mature analytical framework follow, with the CMMI-SE/SW~® model as a template for System Safety Analysis Maturity Levels. These measures establish grounds for increasing levels of detail, repeatable processes, traceable conclusions, quality control, and communicated expectations for analytical and review activities. The purpose of the proposed maturity measures is to introduce a balance to the organizational factors that can inhibit appropriate system safety analysis.