The purpose of this project is to continue developing, evaluating, and transferring state-of-the-art software engineering technologies in support of NASA's office of safety and mission assurance…

The purpose of this project is to continue developing, evaluating, and transferring state-of-the-art software engineering technologies in support of NASA's office of safety and mission assurance (osma) mission to deliver impactful software assurance capability to NASA missions. Many state-of-the-art software engineering technologies, such as model-based testing, machine learning-based prediction, measurement-driven decision making, "big data" analytics, and static/dynamic program analysis, have been demonstrated to improve software reliability, safety, quality, and security in commercial and government projects. The study team will continue applying research and expert knowledge to evaluate, transform, and transition such capabilities to support NASA software assurance personnel. The proposed areas of focus are based on and leverage previous work performed especially under osma-supported grants NNX11AQ40G and NNX11AP93G. The proposed research areas include: trade-off analyses of the cost and benefits of software assurance activities for NASA mission classes; measurement-based cost modeling of engineering and assurance activities; techniques for quantifying risk associated with software products (including software reuse), software product lines, and assurance process adherence; evaluation and transitioning of scalable, cost-effective, and usable testing technologies, including coverage-based testing and model-based testing of multi-language software systems; identification and testing of off-nominal behaviors architecture-based safety and reliability analysis legacy software analysis data analytics for mission anomalies and problem repmis to guide assurance activities; creating and evaluating tools to support software assurance activities, such as reliability analyses, safety analyses, and quality assessments; expert support in the creation and maintenance of NASA software assurance standards and guidebooks and guidelines for the effective application of state-of-the-art software engineering technologies, such as model-based software engineering.