Evaluating the effect of formal techniques in industry

In this paper we evaluate the effectiveness of applying a formal component-based approach called Analytical Software Design (ASD) to the development of control software of an industrial project at Philips Healthcare. We analyze the performance of the ASD related tasks carried out during the development processes and report about the main issues encountered. Furthermore, we investigate whether introducing these formal techniques to industry could actually improve the quality and the productivity of the developed code compared to software developed by more traditional development methods