TY - GEN
T1 - On groupthink in safety analysis
T2 - 40th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Software Engineering: Software Engineering in Practice, ICSE-SEIP 2018
AU - Wang, Yang
AU - Wagner, Stefan
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2018 ACM.
PY - 2018/5/27
Y1 - 2018/5/27
N2 - Context: In safety-critical systems, an effective safety analysis produces high-quality safety requirements and ensures a safe product from an early stage. Motivation: In safety-critical industries, safety analysis happens mostly in groups. The occurrence of "groupthink", under which the group members become concurrence-seeking, potentially leads to a poor safety assurance of products and fatalities. Objective: The purpose of this study is to investigate how groupthink influences safety analysis as well as how to reduce it. Method: We conducted a multiple case study in seven companies by surveying 39 members and interviewing 17 members including software developers, software testers, quality engineers, functional safety managers, hazard/risk managers, sales, purchasing, production managers and senior managers. Results: The TOP 10 phenomena of groupthink in safety analysis are: (1) The managers are too optimistic on the plan of safety analysis from norms. (2) The technical members overestimate their capability on avoiding risks. (3) The non-functional department is under negative stereo-types in safety analysis. (4) Non-technical members keep silence during safety analysis. (5) Team members keep consistent opinions with senior safety experts. (6) The team rationalizes the safety analysis solutions. (7) The safety analysts spontaneously freeze the safety-related documents. (8) The safety analyst has an illusion of invulnerability during verification. (9) The internal safety assessor rationalizes the safety assurance to a third party. (10) The team rationalizes the safety analysis for providing safety evidences. Furthermore, we found reasons like "cohesion" and "group insulation" and solutions like "inviting external expert" and "making key members impartial". Conclusion: There is groupthink in safety analysis in practice. Practitioners should look for the phenomena and consider solutions. However, the cases are limited to the investigated domains and countries.
AB - Context: In safety-critical systems, an effective safety analysis produces high-quality safety requirements and ensures a safe product from an early stage. Motivation: In safety-critical industries, safety analysis happens mostly in groups. The occurrence of "groupthink", under which the group members become concurrence-seeking, potentially leads to a poor safety assurance of products and fatalities. Objective: The purpose of this study is to investigate how groupthink influences safety analysis as well as how to reduce it. Method: We conducted a multiple case study in seven companies by surveying 39 members and interviewing 17 members including software developers, software testers, quality engineers, functional safety managers, hazard/risk managers, sales, purchasing, production managers and senior managers. Results: The TOP 10 phenomena of groupthink in safety analysis are: (1) The managers are too optimistic on the plan of safety analysis from norms. (2) The technical members overestimate their capability on avoiding risks. (3) The non-functional department is under negative stereo-types in safety analysis. (4) Non-technical members keep silence during safety analysis. (5) Team members keep consistent opinions with senior safety experts. (6) The team rationalizes the safety analysis solutions. (7) The safety analysts spontaneously freeze the safety-related documents. (8) The safety analyst has an illusion of invulnerability during verification. (9) The internal safety assessor rationalizes the safety assurance to a third party. (10) The team rationalizes the safety analysis for providing safety evidences. Furthermore, we found reasons like "cohesion" and "group insulation" and solutions like "inviting external expert" and "making key members impartial". Conclusion: There is groupthink in safety analysis in practice. Practitioners should look for the phenomena and consider solutions. However, the cases are limited to the investigated domains and countries.
KW - Case study
KW - Groupthink
KW - Safety analysis
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85049681161&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1145/3183519.3183538
DO - 10.1145/3183519.3183538
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:85049681161
T3 - Proceedings - International Conference on Software Engineering
SP - 266
EP - 275
BT - Proceedings 2018 ACM/IEEE 40th International Conference on Software Engineering
PB - IEEE Computer Society
Y2 - 27 May 2018 through 1 June 2018
ER -