It Depends Aero GmbH

Software in aviation is always considered to be complex and thus needs strict development assurance to achieve confidence in the correctness of implemented functionality.

Thus, development compliant to the accepted standard DO-178C/ED-12C is usually used in the industry, utilizing the published supplements (DO-330, DO-331, DO-332, DO-333) for specific topics.

As DO-178C is only a meta-standard, which does not prescribe a specific development approach (agile, spiral, waterfall are all possible realizations under DO-178C), the realization of a specific development process fitting to one's organizational setup, has proven to be challenging.

Copying a process from another company ignores the differences in setup, size, etc. of your own organization, which may lead to non-compliance or overly costly processes.

IDA can support you with experienced experts to:

Develop an efficient development tailored for your setup and needs
Act as SW CVEs towards EASA for certification
Support you with experienced manpower within your development project
Train your personnel in DO-178C

Process Support, Plan Creation, and Training

Planning activities and defining efficient processes and working instructions is a key aspect for an efficient and compliant SW development. For efficiency, the SW development, which makes heavy use of tooling for its tasks, needs to be integrated with the system, security and safety activities and tooling. Otherwise, breaks in development, which are costly especially when changes to the product and its requirement occur, are unavoidable.

Software development must also be liveable by the developers involved: activities, which are only performed “because they are formally required by the process” will be skipped, leading to problems late in development and non-compliance for certification.

IDA can support you in defining an efficient, compliant process, create the SW plans and instructions for you as well as training personnel on the content and rationale of DO-178C objectives and activities.

Process Definition Support

IDA can support you with defining your processes for requirements engineering, architecture, design, coding and integration of software, as well as with the verification activities (analysis, review, testing) and the quality assurance and configuration management as well. We put the emphasis on an integrated approach within your company that is useable and efficient, tailoring DO-178C to your setup and needs. Definition of processes and working instructions also include the creation of templates for the artefacts along the development.

Plan Creation Support

DO-178C puts emphasis on planning activities up front and thus requires plans for development, verification, configuration management, and quality assurance as well as the overarching Plan for Software Aspects for Certification (PSAC). Supporting are standards for requirements engineering, design, coding and modelling (if used). IDA can create these plans and standards for you for your development project.

Training Support

Understanding DO-178C and especially the rationale behind its objectives is essential for an efficient development. IDA can provide training tailored to your setup, and experience that is more than a standard one-size-fits-all DO-178C training.

Consulting and Checking

Our experienced experts can support you with advice and also act towards EASA for certification.

Gap Analysis and Improvement Assessment

We can analyse your existing SW development, which may only be at prototype level currently, or come from a non-aviation background, and assess where gaps to a DO-178C compliant development exist and how to close them. Also, even if you have an existing development process, we can assess it an provide improvement suggestions, e.g., using certain tools or tool integrations to improve efficiency or lift a SW Level D development process to a SW Level C compliant process, etc.

Pre-SOI Preparation and Audit

The Stage Of Involvement (SOI) meetings with the authorities (planning, development, verification and certification) are the important milestones towards SW certification. IDA can support you in preparing the SOI meetings (dry-runs) and auditing the process and evidence before going to the authorities to minimize the probability of unpleasant surprises.

CVE Activity

IDA experts have been acting as Compliance Verification Engineers (CVEs) in previous roles, implementing the independent checking function of Part 21 for Design Organizations. We can support your organization in this capacity as well, not only with the final check of artefacts before they go to EASA, but also with advice and discussion towards this during development.

Engineering, Development Support

IDA can not only support you with the planning, consulting, and authority interaction aspects of SW development, but also during the specific activities of the development.

Tool Development and Integration

Tools play a huge role in SW development, more so than in the other disciplines (system, safety, security). Using the right tools and using them in an integrated and automated fashion is a key to an efficient and liveable SW development. IDA can support you with:

Tool qualification according to DO-330
Developing Tools tailored to your needs
Developing Integrations between existing tools to automate or streamline activities
Suggest tools for verification or development for automation

Requirements Engineering and Architecture Support

High-Level and Low-Level requirements as well as SW architecture can be challenging. IDA can support you in the creation of these artefacts based on our real-world development experience.

Verification Support

Most effort in DO-178C compliant SW development is spent in verification activities, a key aspect of the excellent track record of SW developed in this framework. IDA can support you with the definition of verification methods (analysis, review, test) tailored to your needs and also with the performance of verification, giving you a clear alternative for the required verification independence in DO-178C to internal personnel.