Formal Methods Adoption in Industry: An Experience Report

While formal methods provide powerful means by which designers can show that their systems meet specific requirements, industry has been slow to adopt them. The need for users to learn specialized languages and have a firm grasp of mathematical logic are primary hurdles to such adoption. Even though formal verification tools can make the process less tedious and reduce human error, they generally still require guidance from humans with specialized knowledge. In this report, the author’s experiences working for a small business are presented, which involved the development and promotion of formal methods tools for public and government agencies. It is notable that the end users of these tools were not necessarily specialists, and often had little to no prior experience with formal methods. Here, we specifically look at the general-purpose design language that was used for modeling, the development of intuitive graphics-based tools to make the system design task easier, and how automated model checking was applied to the resulting system models. We discuss the interactions with and feedback from clients regarding these tools, and in the conclusion make some suggestions regarding their adoption.