Integration of the 4+1 Software Safety Assurance Principles with Scrum

Abstract

Some researchers have attempted to tailor agile methods to comply with specific standards (e.g. SafeScrum and IEC61508). However, this risks over-configuring the agile method in such a way as to make it difficult to apply it to another safety standard. Our approach sought to look at the problems of addressing the more fundamental principles of safety assurance by adopting the 4+1 safety principles and investigating how a Scrum process challenges, and can be adapted to give strong indication that the practitioners felt that there is a significant potential for successful integration of the 4+1 principles within Scrum. There were some issues where practitioners were concerned to focus only on one safety standard, and neither the agile practitioners nor the safety practitioners had a clear understanding of the outlook and work of the other group. However, we used these issues to inform a further set of questions. We conducted semi-structured interviews with participants to explore the general feasibility of the approach, and to provide an assessment as to whether the 4+1 principles can be addressed without compromising agility.