Best ISO-26262 Compliance Tools, Checklists & Templates

ISO 26262 is an international standard for functional safety in the automotive industry. It provides guidelines and requirements for developing safety-critical automotive systems, including hardware and software components. The standard was developed to address the increasing complexity of electronic systems in vehicles and the potential risks associated with their failures.

ISO 26262 defines a comprehensive framework for managing the safety lifecycle of automotive systems, from concept development to decommissioning. It establishes processes, activities, and artifacts that should be followed and produced during each phase of the development cycle to ensure the safety of the system.

In this article, we will discuss some great requirements management software organizations can use for ISO-26262 compliance, standard checklist, and essential templates.

Best ISO-26262 Compliance Tools

There are many ISO-26262 requirements management tools available on the market. The best tool for you will depend on your specific needs and preferences. Here are some popular ISO-26262 requirements management tools.

Visure Requirements ALM Platform

Visure Requirements offers comprehensive support for ISO 26262 compliance by providing a cohesive and agile artifact management solution for the development and verification of electrical and electronic systems in production vehicles. It provides a centralized environment where all project artifacts, including hazards, safety goals, risks, safety requirements, verification activities, and changes, can be managed and traced with end-to-end traceability.

The platform enables users to meet the requirements of ISO 26262 by creating the necessary deliverables and achieving the desired Automotive Safety Integrity Level (ASIL). With its centralized repository, Visure Requirements ensures that all artifacts are easily accessible and allows for efficient traceability, impact analysis, hazard analysis, and risk management.

Collaboration is facilitated through concurrent work capabilities, allowing multiple users to collaborate on the same set of requirements simultaneously. The system keeps track of changes with a complete versioning system, ensuring traceability and providing comprehensive reports.

Visure Requirements also offers an Integration Platform that supports XML-based standards like ReqIF and XRI, as well as integration with third-party tools such as Jira. This versatility enables users to extend the capabilities of Visure Requirements while keeping all project information centralized.

Features offered by Visure include:

• Comprehensive Traceability: Comprehensive traceability is a crucial aspect of ISO 26262 compliance. The Visure Requirements ALM Platform allows you to establish traceability links between different artifacts, such as requirements, designs, tests, and hazards. This enables you to track the relationships and dependencies between various elements throughout the development lifecycle.
• Impact Analysis: The Visure Requirements ALM Platform provides impact analysis capabilities, allowing you to assess the potential consequences of changes made to requirements or other related artifacts. This helps you evaluate the impact on safety goals, hazards, and risk assessments, ensuring that any modifications are properly managed and potential risks are identified.
• Hazard and Risk Analysis: ISO 26262 mandates hazard analysis and risk assessment as essential activities for ensuring functional safety. The Visure Requirements ALM Platform supports hazard and risk analysis by providing functionalities for documenting hazards, identifying risks, evaluating risk levels, and defining risk mitigation measures. This enables you to perform thorough safety analyses in compliance with ISO 26262 requirements.
• Great Safety Requirements Documentation: The Visure Requirements ALM Platform offers features to facilitate the documentation of safety requirements in accordance with ISO 26262. It provides structured templates, customizable fields, and rich-text editors to capture and document safety requirements effectively. This ensures that safety requirements are properly defined, managed, and communicated throughout the development process.
• Test Management: Effective test management is critical for ISO 26262 compliance. The Visure Requirements ALM Platform includes test management capabilities that allow you to define, manage, and track test cases, test execution results, and coverage analysis. This helps ensure that all required tests are planned, executed, and documented as part of the verification and validation activities.
• Change Management: The Visure Requirements ALM Platform supports change management processes by providing features for change request tracking, impact analysis, and approval workflows. This helps you manage and control changes to requirements, designs, and other artifacts, ensuring that modifications are properly assessed, approved, and implemented while maintaining compliance with ISO 26262.
• Configuration Management: Configuration management is crucial for maintaining the integrity and control of work products throughout the development lifecycle. The Visure Requirements ALM Platform offers configuration management capabilities that allow you to manage different versions of requirements, designs, and other project artifacts. It enables proper version control, baselining, and change tracking, ensuring the consistency and traceability of project configurations.

IBM DOORS

IBM Rational DOORS is a widely recognized requirements management tool that can effectively support ISO 26262 compliance. Here’s how IBM DOORS can assist in achieving ISO 26262 compliance:

1. Requirements Management: IBM DOORS offers a platform for capturing, organizing, and managing requirements. It includes features for creating, editing, version control, and traceability of requirements, enabling you to define and manage safety requirements as mandated by ISO 26262.
2. Traceability: ISO 26262 emphasizes the importance of establishing comprehensive traceability between different artifacts. IBM DOORS facilitates the creation and management of traceability links, allowing you to track the relationships and dependencies among requirements, designs, hazards, and tests throughout the development lifecycle.
3. Impact Analysis: With IBM DOORS, you can perform impact analysis to assess the potential consequences of changes to requirements or other related artifacts. By understanding the impacts on safety goals, hazards, risk assessments, and associated requirements, you can effectively manage change while ensuring safety is not compromised.
4. Hazard and Risk Analysis: IBM DOORS integrates with other hazard and risk analysis tools, enabling you to document and manage hazards, risks, and risk reduction measures. It provides a platform to capture and trace safety-related information, such as identified hazards, risk assessments, and mitigation strategies, aligning with ISO 26262 requirements.
5. Safety Requirements Documentation: IBM DOORS supports structured requirement documentation with customizable fields, rich-text editors, and templates. These features facilitate the creation and management of safety requirements in a clear and organized manner, ensuring compliance with ISO 26262 documentation requirements.

Matlab Simulink

MATLAB/Simulink, a widely used modeling and simulation tool, can be effectively employed to support ISO 26262 compliance in the automotive industry. Here’s how MATLAB/Simulink can assist with ISO 26262:

1. Model-Based Design: ISO 26262 encourages the use of model-based design (MBD) methodologies for developing safety-critical systems. MATLAB/Simulink provides a comprehensive platform for MBD, allowing you to create and simulate system models, subsystems, and algorithms. This approach facilitates early verification and validation, reducing the risk of errors and aiding in compliance.
2. Safety Analysis: MATLAB/Simulink provides capabilities for performing safety analyses, such as failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA) and fault tree analysis (FTA). You can analyze the behavior of your system under different failure scenarios and assess the impact on safety goals and requirements. These analyses contribute to hazard identification, risk assessment, and safety validation activities as required by ISO 26262.
3. Verification and Validation: MATLAB/Simulink supports the verification and validation of safety-critical systems. It provides simulation and testing tools to validate system behavior, including dynamic testing, model-in-the-loop (MIL) testing, and software-in-the-loop (SIL) testing. These activities help ensure that the system meets safety requirements and operates as intended.
4. Traceability: ISO 26262 emphasizes the need for traceability between requirements, models, and implementation artifacts. MATLAB/Simulink allows you to establish traceability links between system models, requirements, and test cases. This enables you to demonstrate the coverage of safety requirements and supports compliance with ISO 26262 traceability requirements.
5. Automatic Code Generation: MATLAB/Simulink supports automatic code generation for embedded systems. This feature allows you to generate production-ready code directly from your models, ensuring consistency between the model and the implementation. Automatic code generation can help minimize errors and improve the efficiency of development while complying with ISO 26262 requirements for software development.
6. Tool Qualification: MATLAB/Simulink provides a tool qualification kit that assists in the qualification of the software tool as required by ISO 26262. This kit contains documentation and artifacts to support the tool qualification process and helps ensure that the tool is suitable for developing safety-critical systems.

Modern Requirements4DevOps

Modern Requirements4DevOps is a requirements management tool that can be utilized to support ISO 26262 compliance in the automotive industry. Here’s how Modern Requirements4DevOps can assist with ISO 26262:

1. Requirements Management: Modern Requirements4DevOps provides a centralized platform for capturing, organizing, and managing requirements. It offers features for requirement creation, editing, version control, and traceability. This enables you to define and manage safety requirements in alignment with ISO 26262.
2. Traceability: ISO 26262 emphasizes the importance of traceability between different artifacts, such as requirements, designs, hazards, and tests. Modern Requirements4DevOps facilitates the establishment and management of traceability links, allowing you to track the relationships and dependencies between various elements throughout the development lifecycle.
3. Impact Analysis: Modern Requirements4DevOps supports impact analysis, enabling you to assess the potential consequences of changes made to requirements or other related artifacts. This assists in managing change effectively and ensures that safety goals, hazards, and risk assessments are not compromised.
4. Change Management: Modern Requirements4DevOps provides functionalities for change management, allowing you to track, manage, and control changes to requirements and other artifacts. It supports change request tracking, impact analysis, and approval workflows, facilitating effective change management practices in line with ISO 26262.
5. Collaboration and Integration: Modern Requirements4DevOps promotes collaboration by allowing multiple users to work on the same set of requirements simultaneously. It provides features for collaborative reviews, feedback management, and discussion threads. Additionally, the tool offers integration capabilities with other development tools, enabling seamless data exchange and interoperability.

Parasoft

Parasoft is a software testing and quality assurance tool that can be effectively used to support ISO 26262 compliance in the automotive industry. Here’s how Parasoft can assist with ISO 26262:

1. Unit Testing: ISO 26262 requires the verification of software components through rigorous unit testing. Parasoft provides a robust unit testing framework that allows you to design, implement, and execute unit tests for your software components. It supports various programming languages and provides features for test case creation, execution, and result analysis.
2. Static Code Analysis: Parasoft offers static code analysis capabilities that help identify potential software defects and violations of coding standards. It checks for issues such as buffer overflows, null pointer dereferences, and compliance with coding guidelines specified in ISO 26262. Static code analysis helps ensure the quality and safety of software components.
3. Code Coverage Analysis: ISO 26262 requires achieving a certain level of code coverage to demonstrate that safety-critical software has been thoroughly tested. Parasoft provides code coverage analysis tools that measure the extent to which your tests exercise different parts of the code. It helps you identify areas that require additional testing to achieve the required code coverage levels.
4. Test Automation: Parasoft supports test automation, allowing you to automate the execution of tests, including unit tests, integration tests, and system tests. Test automation helps improve testing efficiency, enables regression testing, and ensures that tests are executed consistently and reliably as required by ISO 26262.
5. Traceability: Parasoft enables traceability between requirements, tests, and code. It helps establish and maintain traceability links, allowing you to track the relationships and dependencies between different artifacts. This supports compliance with ISO 26262 traceability requirements.
6. Compliance Reporting: Parasoft provides reporting capabilities that allow you to generate comprehensive reports on testing activities, code analysis results, and compliance status. These reports can be used to demonstrate compliance with ISO 26262 and provide evidence of the testing efforts undertaken.

ISO-26262 Checklist

An ISO-26262 checklist can help ensure that you address the key requirements and activities outlined in the ISO 26262 standard. Keep in mind that this checklist is not exhaustive, and it is recommended to consult the official ISO 26262 standard document for a comprehensive understanding of the requirements. Here’s a general ISO-26262 checklist:

1. Organizational Aspects:
   • Establish a safety culture within the organization.
   • Define safety-related roles and responsibilities.
   • Implement safety management processes.
2. Management of Functional Safety:
   • Define the scope of the safety-related system.
   • Identify safety goals and derive safety requirements.
   • Perform hazard analysis and risk assessment.
   • Define and implement safety measures and safety concepts.
3. Development Interface Agreement:
   • Establish an agreement with stakeholders regarding safety requirements.
   • Define safety interfaces and ensure their compatibility.
4. System Level:
   • Define system architecture and functional requirements.
   • Perform safety analyses, such as FMEA (Failure Mode and Effects Analysis) and FTA (Fault Tree Analysis).
   • Establish a safety plan and safety case.
5. Hardware Level:
   • Develop safety requirements for hardware components.
   • Perform safety analyses, such as FMEDA (Failure Modes, Effects, and Diagnostic Analysis).
   • Verify and validate hardware safety requirements.
6. Software Level:
   • Develop safety requirements for software components.
   • Perform safety analyses, such as SW-FMEA (Software Failure Mode and Effects Analysis) and SW-FTA (Software Fault Tree Analysis).
   • Verify and validate software safety requirements.
7. Production and Operation:
   • Define safety measures for production, operation, and maintenance.
   • Implement safety-related processes for software and hardware updates.
   • Ensure proper documentation and configuration management.
8. Supporting Processes:
   • Establish processes for safety management, configuration management, and change management.
   • Perform functional safety assessments and audits.
   • Define processes for verification and validation activities.
9. Documentation:
   • Maintain comprehensive documentation of all safety-related activities, including requirements, analyses, test results, and modifications.
   • Ensure proper traceability between safety requirements and other artifacts.
10. Verification and Validation:
    • Develop test strategies and plans for verifying and validating safety requirements.
    • Perform tests, simulations, and analyses to demonstrate compliance with safety requirements.
    • Document and report verification and validation results.

It is important to note that this checklist provides a general overview, and the specific requirements and activities may vary depending on the scope and complexity of the system being developed. Consulting the ISO 26262 standard and seeking expert guidance is crucial to ensure accurate compliance with the standard.

Essential ISO-26262 Templates

ISO 26262 is an international standard for the functional safety of automotive systems. It requires the development and verification of safety-critical systems following specific processes and documentation. Here’s an explanation of the essential templates commonly used to support ISO 26262 compliance:

Safety Plan Template: 

The Safety Plan template outlines the overall safety management plan for the project. It defines the scope, objectives, and activities related to safety. The template covers aspects such as safety goals, safety requirements, safety-related roles and responsibilities, safety activities, and the overall safety strategy. It provides a roadmap for managing safety throughout the development lifecycle.

Hazard Analysis and Risk Assessment (HARA) Template: 

The HARA template assists in conducting the Hazard Analysis and Risk Assessment process, a key activity in ISO 26262. It helps identify potential hazards and assess their associated risks. The template guides the analysis of hazards, identification of safety goals, determination of risk levels, and definition of necessary risk mitigation measures.

Safety Requirements Template: 

The Safety Requirements template is used to define and document safety requirements. It provides a structured format for capturing safety requirements related to hardware, software, system architecture, interfaces, and other safety-related aspects. The template includes sections for specifying safety requirements, their rationale, and their allocation to different system components.

Functional Safety Concept Template: 

The Functional Safety Concept template helps document the functional safety concept for the system. It describes how the safety requirements will be achieved, ensuring that safety goals are met. The template covers aspects such as functional safety requirements, functional safety goals, safety mechanisms, system architecture considerations, and other relevant details.

Safety Case Template: 

The Safety Case template is a comprehensive document that demonstrates the compliance of the system with ISO 26262 requirements. It provides evidence that the system meets the necessary safety standards and requirements. The template includes sections for system description, safety analyses, verification activities, supporting evidence, and arguments justifying the system’s safety.

Verification and Validation Plan Template: 

The Verification and Validation Plan template outlines the plan for verifying and validating the safety requirements. It details the activities, methods, and resources required to ensure that the safety requirements are adequately tested and verified. The template covers aspects such as test methods, test environments, acceptance criteria, and the overall approach for verifying the system’s safety.

Configuration Management Plan Template: 

The Configuration Management Plan template guides the management of configuration items and version control for safety-related artifacts. It ensures that changes to safety-critical components are properly managed and tracked. The template covers aspects such as configuration identification, change control processes, traceability, and versioning of safety-related documents.

Safety Audit Checklist Template: 

The Safety Audit Checklist template provides a structured checklist for conducting safety audits. Safety audits help ensure compliance with ISO 26262 requirements and identify areas for improvement. The template covers various aspects of safety management, documentation, implementation, and verification. It aids in assessing the effectiveness of safety-related processes and identifying potential gaps.

These templates serve as starting points and can be customized to fit the specific needs and processes of each organization. They provide a structured approach to document safety-related activities and ensure compliance with ISO 26262 standards. However, it’s important to note that the templates should be adapted and tailored to align with the specific context and requirements of each project.

Conclusion

In conclusion, ISO-26262 is an automotive standard that helps ensure the safety of motorized vehicle systems. The right tools and procedures can make compliance much easier to attain and grasp. This blog post has shed some light on the top ISO-26262 Compliance Tools and Templates to help you find the best option for your project. The comprehensive checklists have been provided to make sure all of your bases are covered and there is a round-up of all key requirements from ISO-26262. For those taking on this important endeavor, Visure Requirements ALM Platform is offering a free 30-day trial with its specialized tools and services. Make sure to take advantage of it! When it comes to automotive software development, we hope the knowledge gained through this blog will guarantee quality products delivered safely in the end.