From formal models to formally based methods: An industrial experience

We address the problem of increasing the impact of formal methods in the pr actice of industrial computer applications. We summarize the reasons why fo rmal methods so far did not gain widespread use within the industrial envir onment despite several promising experiences. We suggest an evolutionary ra ther than revolutionary attitude in the introduction of formal methods in t he practice of industrial applications, and we report on our long-standing experience which involves an academic institution, Politecnico di Milano, t wo main industrial partners, ENEL and CISE, and occasionally a few other in dustries. Our approach aims at augmenting an existing and fairly deeply roo ted informal industrial methodology with our original formalism, the logic specification language TRIO. On the basis of the experiences we gained we a rgue that our incremental attitude toward the introduction of formal method s within the industry could be effective largely independently from the cho sen formalism.