Agile software development has had success in different domains. However there is one area where the implementation of agile methods still needs significant development – that is in the field of agile and safety-critical system development. In this field, software engineering processes need to be justified against the requirements of software safety assurance standards (such as ISO 26262 in the automotive domain). It is therefore important that agile development processes can be justified to levels of assurance equivalent to that provided by traditional development approaches. While there is existing literature concerning the integration of agile methods with specific safety-critical system development standards and agile methods, the question of how fundamental software safety assurance principles can be addressed within agile methods has received little attention. In this thesis we describe the results of practitioner surveys that highlight the primary concerns regarding the use of agile methods within safety-critical development. In the context of this survey, and of existing work on software safety assurance principles, we then present an initial proposal as to how assurance could be addressed with an existing agile development method – Scrum. This proposal was submitted to practitioners for initial feedback and evaluation. The results of this evaluation are also presented.
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