Software FMEA that truly fits your product
Classic FMEA examines parts and failure rates. We carry the method over to software architectures correctly – with purpose-built material instead of improvised analogies.
FMEA (Failure Mode and Effects Analysis) is the systematic study of possible failure modes and their effects. Originally developed for mechanical and electronic parts – Software FMEA carries that same systematic approach over to code, interfaces and architectures.
Four places where classic FMEA misses the mark on your software
Parts age and break – code doesn’t. Classic scales for “probability of occurrence” don’t map 1:1.
Wrong states, race conditions, faulty error handling – structurally different failure modes than hardware.
A software baseline keeps changing – the FMEA has to grow with the code, not get created once and left behind.
Microservices, interfaces, third-party components – failures propagate along different paths than inside a single part.
Based on experience, a defect caught during the architecture phase costs a fraction of what fixing it after release does.
From analogy to a true fit
Our approach: from architecture to prioritization
Software FMEA doesn’t succeed through a tweaked form, but through a different approach altogether. Ours combines four steps: understand the architecture, catalog failure modes specific to software, assess without failure rates, and embed the results into your existing development process.
We map the modules, interfaces and dependencies of your system – not parts, but components and how they interact. This structure becomes the basis for the analysis, not a generic form.
Together with your team, we identify software-specific failure modes – wrong states, race conditions, incomplete error handling, interface breaks – instead of forcing part failure modes onto them.
Instead of statistical failure rates, we use qualitative rating scales for occurrence and detection, calibrated together with your team – reasoned and traceable, not made up.
The results feed into code reviews, CI/CD gates and your backlog instead of gathering dust as a document – linked to the TARA (Threat Analysis and Risk Assessment) from the cybersecurity analysis where useful.
Decades of risk analysis, carried over to software
FMEA (Failure Mode and Effects Analysis), FTA (Fault Tree Analysis), HARA (Hazard Analysis and Risk Assessment) and TARA (Threat Analysis and Risk Assessment) have proven themselves over decades across startups, mid-sized companies, global corporations and public authorities – we carry that same methodological depth over to software architectures, consistently. Backed by experience with maturity assessments (CMMI, SPICE) and current regulation such as the EU AI Act and the Cyber Resilience Act, so Software FMEA never sits in isolation but fits into your entire quality and compliance approach.