Formal Methods: Oversold? Underused? A Survey
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Context: Formal methods (FM) have been around for a while, still being unclear how to leverage their benefits, overcome their challenges, and set new directions for their improvement towards more successful transfer into practice. Objective: We study the use of formal methods in mission-critical software domains, probing industrial and academic views. Method: We perform a cross-sectional on-line survey. Results: Our results indicate an increased intent to apply FMs in industry, suggesting a positively perceived usefulness. But we observe a negatively perceived ease of use. Scalability, skills, and education seem to be among the key challenges to support this intent. Limitations: Some difficulties in achieving a large sample at a good response rate lead to limited generalizability. Conclusions: However, we present the largest study of this kind so far (N = 192), and our observations provide valuable insights, highlighting directions for future theoretical and empirical research of formal methods.
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