"Geeks" and licensing

IMHO: All software development should be performed as such: 1) Requirements - what should it do, and not do. Spin this till everybody signs off. 2) Prelim design - Ok, a rough outline of the design, data structures and control/data flow defined here. 3) Detailed design - Define all the modules and their function, break it down. 4) Test plan - integrate testing into detailed design, make it unit testable. a unit is somthing that has input and output and side effects, like a function. 5) Finally, coding - build modules in parallel with test code. 6) Unit testing - verify that modules comply with detailed design. 7) Integration testing - hook it all together, make sure it works, apply test plan developed in step 4 for fully integrated aplication. Do 1-3 until marketing decides what they want,4-7 until you find no errors.

For safety critical, you should /have to perform statement and decision coverage in step 6 and 7 and the detailed design should have a one-to-one corespondence with the detailed design document. Jim Davis.