Verification in Practice
October 10, 2024
In the Programming Methodology group at ETH Zürich, we are performing a study to explore the challenges faced when applying formal verification at scale. Because of your expertise in industrial program verification, we would like to get your insights and perspectives. We would like to invite you to participate in an interview about your experience applying these methods to industrial software.
The results of this interview will help inform the future development of program verifiers, providing the real-world context needed to make verification a better and more scalable experience for all.
If you are willing and interested in participating, you can schedule an interview time here. Upon choosing an interview time, you will be asked to fill out a short pre-interview questionnaire (seven questions) and sign the attached consent form. Once we have received your completed questionnaire and the signed consent form, we will send you the link to the meeting. The interview takes place via video conference with two interviewers and lasts at most one hour.
If you are not able to participate, but you know a colleague who might, we would kindly ask you to forward this email or provide us with their contact information so that we might reach out to them ourselves.
What is investigated and how?
This study aims to explore the application of formal verification techniques in industrial contexts. We seek to understand the characteristics of successful applications, the challenges faced by verification engineers, and opportunities to improve the usability and applicability of formal verification tools and techniques.
What am I supposed to do as a participant?
As a participant in this study, you will be asked to: Fill out a brief questionnaire prior to the interview collecting demographic information (e.g. about your current role, years of experience etc.). Participate in a semi-structured interview lasting approximately one hour. Answer a series of open-ended questions about your experiences and insights related to the application of formal verification techniques in your work. These questions will cover topics such as successful applications, challenges faced, and potential improvements to verification tools and techniques.
What data is collected from me and how is it used?
Your personal data (name and email address) will be collected solely to facilitate the consent process and, if you opt in, to share the study’s findings with you. No personal data will be linked to the interview responses in the final dataset. Your personal data and pseudonymization keys will be stored separately from the interview data in a secure, password-protected digital storage system. Access to these data will be limited to authorized research team members responsible for data management.
The interviews will be recorded and transcribed. All data resulting from the interviews will be anonymized in accordance with ETH Law Art. 36d. Identifiable information will be removed from the data before analysis, ensuring that individual participants cannot be traced from the published results.
The results of the study will be published and presented at industry conferences. Summaries of the findings may also be disseminated through professional networks and online platforms related to formal verification. Publications will ensure that all data are presented in an aggregated form, preserving anonymity.
Upon publication of the study results, anonymized data will potentially be made accessible through a permanent secure repository for other researchers to use. The repository will provide access to coded data only, ensuring that no personal identifiers are included.
Members of the ETH Zurich Ethics Commission may access the original data for examination purposes. Strict confidentiality will be observed at any time.