Software Engineering Institute

This is an introductory report on the use of model-based verification techniques within software development and upgrade practices. It presents the specific activities and responsibilities that are required of engineers who use the model-based verification paradigm and describes proposed approaches for integrating model-based verification into an organization's software engineering practices. The approaches outlined in this report are preliminary concepts for the integration of model building and analysis techniques into software engineering review and inspection practices. These techniques are presented as both practices within peer review processes and as autonomous engineering investigations. The objective of this report is to provide a starting point for the use of model-based verification techniques and a framework for their evaluation in real-world applications. It is expected that the results of pilot studies that employ the preliminary approaches described here will form the basis for improving the practices themselves and software verification generally.