I went to an engineering school in Canada for Electrical/Computer Engineering and this was an example of engineering failure we studied in a course about software quality assurance and engineering ethics. Not sure if its widely used as a case study outside of Canada, but it really stuck with me. Especially when designing critical systems.
There are two types of reactions to the Therac-25 story.
1) We need to put a lot of process in place to review and test and ensure we have proper interlocks in place.
2) They just didn't have enough talent on the team. It couldn't happen here.
You want some people with reaction 1 working on a safety critical system.
There are two types of reactions to the Therac-25 story.
1) We need to put a lot of process in place to review and test and ensure we have proper interlocks in place.
2) They just didn't have enough talent on the team. It couldn't happen here.
You want some people with reaction 1 working on a safety critical system.