Safety methods in software process improvement

Even if the application developers produce software in accordance with the customer requirements, they cannot guarantee that the software will behave in a safe way during the lifetime of the software. We define a system as safe if the risks related to its use are judged to be acceptable [1]. Safety must not be confused with security which broadly is defined as keeping the system unavailable for people who should not be able to access it. In this paper we introduce the Failure Mode and Effect Analysis (FMEA) technique into the software development process to improve the safety of business-critical software. In a business environment this means that the system does not behave in such a way that it causes the customer or his users to lose money or important information. We will use the term "business-safe" for this characteristic.