Tool Qualification: ISO 26262 Software Compliance

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Tool Qualification for Safety-Critical Automotive Systems

Safety-critical software development standards like ISO 26262 require that manufacturers prove that the tools they’re using to develop software provide correct and predictable results. The process of providing such evidence is known as tool qualification. While it’s a necessary process, tool qualification is often a tedious and time-consuming activity that many organizations fail to plan for.

The end deliverable is proof in the form of documentation, but there is more to the qualification process than just delivering a big pile of static documentation. Parasoft’s Qualification Kits for C/C++test, which include a convenient tool wizard that brings automation into the picture, reduce the time and effort required for tool qualification.

Pre-Certified Tools

Tool qualification needs to start with tool selection, ensuring you are using a development tool that is certified by an organization, such as TÜV SÜD. This will significantly reduce the effort when it comes to tool qualification.

Parasoft C/C++test and C/C++test CT are certified by TÜV SÜD for functional safety according to IEC 61508, IEC 62304, EN 50128, and ISO 26262 standards for both host based and embedded target applications. The fully integrated testing solution for C/C++ software development paves the way for a streamlined qualification of static analysis, unit testing, and coverage requirements for the safety-critical standards.

Pre-certified tools are often enough for lower safety integrity levels such as ASIL A and B. However, for ASIL C and D, tool qualification requires further validation, usually requiring verification and validation of the tool itself on target system hardware.

Tool Qualification Requires More Testing

Traditionally, tool qualification has meant significant amounts of manual labor, testing, and documenting to satisfy a certification audit. But this documentation-heavy process requires manual interpretation and completion. As a result, it’s time consuming and adds to an organization’s already heavy testing schedule and budget.

Parasoft leverages its own software test automation tool qualification with Qualification Kits, which include a documented workflow to dramatically reduce the amount of effort required.

Benefits of Using the Qualification Kits

Automatically reduce the scope of qualification to only the parts of the tool in use.
Automate tests required for qualification as much as possible.
Manage any manual tests as eloquently as possible and integrate results alongside automated tests.
Automatically generate audit-ready documentation that reports on exactly what’s being qualified—not more, not less!

Qualify Only the Tools Used

There should be no need to do any extra work for qualifying capabilities not used during development. Reducing the scope of testing, reporting, and documentation is a key way to reduce the qualification workload.

The example below shows the use case of C/C++ static code analysis being used to check compliance to the MISRA C 2023 standard, as part of ISO 26262 qualification. The tool then selects only the parts of the qualification suite needed for this function.

Screenshot showing functional compliance selection with additional use case settings — Functional compliance selection

Functional compliance selection with additional use case settings 2 — Additional use case settings

Screenshot showing feature selection in C/C++test. Parasoft Qualification Kits allow users to select the options required for their project. — Parasoft Qualification Kits allow users to select the options required for their project. Upon selection, only tests and documentation is used and provided from this point forward.

Leverage Test Automation and Analytics

A unique advantage to qualifying test automation tools is that the tools can be used to automate their own testing. Automating this as much as possible is key to making it as painless as possible. Even manual tests, which are inevitable for any development tool, are handled as efficiently as possible. Step by step instructions are provided and results are entered and stored as part of the qualification record.

Parasoft C/C++test and C/C++test CT collect and store all test results from each build, and tests run as they do for any type of project. These results are brought into the test status wizard in the Parasoft Qualification Kits to provide a comprehensive overview of the results like those shown below.

Screenshot showing test status from tool chain with C/C++test. — Leveraging centralized data collection and automating the qualification process greatly reduces manual tracking of compliance progress.

Managing Known Defects

Every development tool has known bugs and any vendor selling products for safety-critical development must have these documented. There’s more to dealing with known defects than just documenting them. Tool qualification requires proof that these defects are not affecting the results used for verification and validation. For each known defect, the manufacturer must provide a mitigation for each one and document it to the satisfaction of the certifying auditor.

It’s incumbent on the tool vendor to automate the handling of known defects as much as possible. After all, the vendor is expecting customers to deal with third-party software bugs as part of their workload! The Parasoft C/C++test qualification kits include a wizard to automate the recording of mitigation for known defects as shown in the example below.

Screenshot of Mitigation Selection in Parasoft C/C++test. — Known defects are managed directly in Parasoft C/C++test.

Automation of Tool Qualification Documentation

The end result of tool qualification is documentation, and lots of it. Every test executed with results, every known defect with mitigation, manual test results, and exceptions are all recorded and reported. Qualification kits from other vendors can be just documentation alone, and without automation, documenting compliance is tedious.

Instead, using the Qualification Kits for C/C++test, the critical documents are generated automatically as part of the workflow.

Tool Classification Report

Determine the qualification needed, and presents the maximum safety level classification for C/C++test based on the use cases selected by the user.

Tool Qualification Plan

Describe how C/C++test is going to be qualified for use in a safety relevant development project.

Tool Qualification Report

Demonstrate that C/C++test has been qualified according to the tool qualification plan.

Tool Safety Manual

Describe how C/C++test should be used safely, for example compliant to safety standards, like ISO 26262 and IEC 61508, in safety-critical projects.

In each of these documents, only the documentation required for the tool features in use is generated because the scope of the qualification was narrowed down at the beginning of the project. Automation and narrowing the scope of qualification greatly reduces the documentation burden.