Experience with ISO WD 26262 in Automotive Safety Projects

Safety of automotive electronics is drawing attention to a growing community. The existing variety of rules and regulations will predominantly be replaced by the new automotive safety standard ISO WD 26262. This paper reports on experiences with the application of the new standard in safety projects and the difficulties which arise from the current working draft stage. It focuses on software safety capability determination against a background of continuously changing regulations. An approach is described for assessing the competence level of stakeholders and for providing the results in a familiar scale of scoring. Furthermore the paper addresses common aspects with ISO 15504, which is concerned with software process improvement and capability determination. Finally, a project of integration is suggested.