Software & engineering assurance
Assurance evidence built as the engineering work progresses.
Align process improvement and software assurance with your programme scope. Connect requirements, development activities, verification and configuration records.
Start with a free 15-minute discussion. Scope and fees follow an assessment.
What usually goes wrong.
Practice that lives in people, rather than in process
Your senior engineers are excellent, and the work gets done. However, none of it is repeatable once they move on, and an appraisal essentially measures the organisation, not the individuals.
Traceability reconstructed after the fact
Requirements, code and tests exist, but were never actually linked as they were built. Rebuilding that chain retrospectively tends to cost more than doing it once, correctly, the first time.
Design Assurance Level assumed, rather than agreed
Work starts before the DAL is actually settled with the integrator or authority. Every objective downstream is then either over-engineered or falls short.
An unqualified toolchain
Automation replaces a verification objective, but the tool itself was never qualified under DO-330. This is usually discovered only during the audit.
Agile methodology that breaks the evidence chain
The team runs sprints, and the certification evidence, meanwhile, assumes a plan-driven lifecycle. Neither side is wrong as such - the mapping between the two was simply never built.
Documents written specifically for the appraisal
A process set that has been assembled shortly before the appraisal window. Appraisers test for institutionalisation, and this is exactly the pattern they are trained to detect.
What this practice covers.
Two bodies of work that most organisations essentially need together: organisational process maturity, and the airborne-systems objectives that your certification authority will assess.
Practice area definition, institutionalisation and appraisal readiness - deployed as working practice rather than just a document set assembled before the appraisal. V3.0 broadened the model beyond development and services into data management, people management, safety, security and supplier management.
Objectives, evidence and independence scaled to your Design Assurance Level (DAL), starting from the Plan for Software Aspects of Certification (PSAC) through to the traceability that an authority can actually follow.
The hardware counterpart to the above: planning, requirements capture, validation and verification for complex electronic hardware.
Where your toolchain replaces or automates a DO-178C objective, the tool itself needs to be qualified as well. This is commonly discovered late in the process, and it is expensive to retrofit at that stage.
Model-based development, object-oriented technology and formal methods - essentially how each of these modifies the base DO-178C objectives.
Airworthiness security process and security-effectiveness assurance, which is now routinely flowed down alongside the safety objectives.
Integrated Modular Avionics roles and responsibilities, and the handling of aeronautical data, where your product consumes or produces it.
The discipline underneath everything above: baselines, change control and bidirectional traceability that survives staff turnover.
Running certifiable development inside an Agile operating model, without breaking the evidence chain along the way.
Where airborne software assurance interfaces with your physical QMS.
If your AS9100D system and your DO-178C / CMMI evidence are maintained separately, Clause 8.3 audits are usually where that gap is found first. Here is how they connect, sub-clause by sub-clause.
AS9100D requires a documented design and development plan with stages, reviews and responsibilities. CMMI ML3 Technical Solution practices supply the structured design-alternative selection and product-architecture rationale that this plan is meant to evidence - essentially one planning artefact, rather than two competing ones.
Clause 8.3.3 requires inputs to be complete, unambiguous and traceable to function and performance requirements. DO-178C's Software Requirements Standard (SRS) and Plan for Software Aspects of Certification (PSAC) are that input set for the software item - bidirectional traceability satisfies both simultaneously, provided the tooling is shared.
AS9100D wants evidence that reviews, verification and validation happened at defined stages. CMMI Verification practices and DO-178C's independence-scaled review and test objectives (by Design Assurance Level) are that evidence - structural coverage analysis and peer review records satisfy the same audit question from both directions.
Clause 8.3.5 requires outputs adequate to verify against inputs and to specify product characteristics for production and use. DO-178C's life-cycle data set (design description, source code, verification results) is essentially the software equivalent - configuration-managed and mapped to the DAL that your authority assigned.
Both regimes require controlled change with impact analysis before implementation. One configuration-management baseline and one change-impact process can feed both the AS9100D design-change record and the DO-178C problem-report / change-analysis trail - run these as two separate processes, and they will drift apart within a year.
Recurring findings keep recurring because the underlying structure produces them.
Four systems-led disciplines are used to find and fix that structure - with AI-assisted analysis where it genuinely improves speed and discipline: mapping audit evidence, spotting process gaps, and structuring corrective-action follow-up.
Systems Thinking
Understanding why your recurring findings actually recur - and how to make them stop by fixing the structure, rather than blaming operators or tools.
System Dynamics Modelling
How delays, feedback and incentives drive quality behaviour over time - and where one small change can move the whole system.
Critical Thinking
Separating the certificate from the actual capability. Testing every assumption an auditor will test - before they get to it.
Design Thinking
Building the system around your people, culture and behaviour, so that quality survives real production - not just audit day.
How to assess the evidence behind an advisory approach.
Every CMMI consultant will tell you that your process is appraisal-ready. Before you sign anything, it is worth asking them to actually show you the evidence trail - rather than just a folder that has been assembled last month.
"Your documentation is appraisal-ready."
Appraisers are specifically trained to detect a process set that has been assembled shortly before the appraisal window. It is worth asking whether the evidence was captured as the work actually happened, or written afterward simply to match a template - this distinction is called institutionalisation, and it is essentially the entire point of the appraisal.
"We'll get your requirements traced."
Ask to see one requirement traced live - through to code, through to test, and back again - across a baseline that has already survived a change. Traceability that only works on the happy path tends to collapse the very first time an auditor asks about a specific change.
"DO-178C is basically a documentation exercise."
It is, in fact, an evidence exercise scaled to your Design Assurance Level (DAL). A consultant who speaks about DO-178C only in terms of paperwork has, in all likelihood, never actually built the PSAC-to-verification chain that an authority follows - it is worth asking which DAL, which objectives, and which authority.
"We handle CMMI and DO-178C separately, no problem."
Running them as two disconnected systems is precisely how a Clause 8.3 audit finds the disconnect. It is better to ask how they map the same design-development plan across both - rather than simply how they staff two separate teams.
This is for you if…
Who you would actually be working with.
Former Country Quality Leader, Boeing India (AS9100D scope: 9 sites, 5,000+ engineers). IAQG/Probitas-authenticated AS9100D auditor.
Boeing · Schneider Electric · ABB · safety-critical field engineering
Former Country Quality Leader · AS9100D Management Representative
AS9100D certification scope - one of the largest Boeing operations outside the continental US
Authenticated AS9100D aerospace auditor
Aerospace new product introduction - advanced product quality planning and production part approval
Certified CMMI Practitioner (ISACA) on the current V3.0 model
Trainer in Systems Thinking, System Dynamics Modelling, Critical Thinking and Design Thinking
Start small, prove the value, then scale up.
There is no year-long contract to sign before we both actually know your real gaps.
15-Min Readiness Diagnostic
Free · covering where you stand today, what blocks approval, and an honest read on fit.
Flight Plan Workshop
Half or full-day, conducted on-site · a gap snapshot and dated route map · fixed fee, quoted before booking.
Certification Advisory Retainer
Alongside you through readiness, implementation and audit preparation · scoped only after the workshop.
One advisory, three aerospace quality standards.
Manufacturing, maintenance and distribution are each audited against different standards, by the same OEM supplier-quality teams. Please pick the one that actually matches what you do.
Airborne software and electronics in India answer to these authorities.
DO-178C and DO-254 describe the evidence. In India the bodies that accept that evidence for military and civil airborne systems are CEMILAC, DGAQA and DGCA, with the drone framework layered on top for UAS. Build the process to survive their sampling, not only the appraisal.
| Authority | What it covers | Who needs it | Where AS91XX fits |
|---|---|---|---|
| CEMILAC (Centre for Military Airworthiness and Certification, DRDO) | Military airworthiness. Type certification and design evaluation of military aircraft, aero-engines, airborne stores, software and electronic hardware under the MoD document DDPMAS, delivered through its Regional Centres for Military Airworthiness (RCMAs). Type approval carries the authority to produce the item under RCMA supervision. | Firms that design, develop, modify or produce airborne items for the Indian Air Force, Navy, Army aviation, DRDO programmes or the DPSUs. | The RCMA samples a working configuration-control, traceability and qualification record. AS9100D, with DO-178C / DO-254 evidence for software and electronics, is what that record is usually built on, but the certificate alone is not the approval. |
| DGAQA (Directorate General of Aeronautical Quality Assurance, Department of Defence Production, MoD) | Government quality assurance and final acceptance of military aircraft, UAVs, aero-engines, airborne systems, avionics, armaments and consumables across design, production, repair, overhaul and life extension. DGAQA also approves firms and their quality management systems, and carries out capacity assessment and registration of firms and test laboratories. | Any supplier whose product is accepted by a Government QA representative: direct MoD suppliers, DPSU sub-tiers, repair and overhaul shops on military stores, test laboratories. | DGAQA registration is a capacity and QMS assessment followed by product acceptance on the floor. An AS9100D or AS9110C system gives the evidence structure; what DGAQA tests is whether the inspection, traceability and non-conformance records hold up at acceptance. |
| DGCA (Directorate General of Civil Aviation, under the Ministry of Civil Aviation) - CAR-21 | Civil design and production. CAR-21 governs design organisation approval, production organisation approval and type certification for civil aircraft, engines, propellers and parts, aligned to the EASA Part-21 model. | Civil part and appliance manufacturers, and design houses, that want to release product under their own approval rather than under a customer's. | A CAR-21 production organisation approval is a regulatory approval, not a certification. AS9100D is the usual system underneath it; DGCA audits the organisation, its release procedures and its supplier control directly. |
| MoCA, DGCA and QCI - Drone Rules 2021 | Unmanned aircraft. A drone model needs a Type Certificate before it can be manufactured, imported or operated in India. The prototype is tested by a certification body approved by the Quality Council of India (currently TQ Cert, UL India and Bureau Veritas); DGCA issues the certificate. The rules allow 60 days for the certification body and 15 days for DGCA once the file is complete. | Drone and UAS OEMs, and the parts, motors, batteries, airframe and software suppliers feeding them. | The Type Certificate certifies the design. Repeatable production, configuration control and traceability are what keep an OEM's certificate valid and what its suppliers are audited for. AS9100D-style process ownership is the shortest route to that. |
Questions we're asked first.
Is CMMI still relevant, or has Agile replaced it?
They actually answer different questions. Agile governs how a team works week to week, and CMMI describes whether the organisation can repeat that reliably across teams, sites and staff turnover - which is precisely what an OEM's supplier-quality team is assessing. Most aerospace engineering organisations run both together, and Agile-at-scale frameworks such as SAFe map onto CMMI practice areas rather than replacing them.
Do you appraise us, or prepare us for appraisal?
I prepare you, and serve on the team - not appraise you. Appraisals today are conducted against CMMI V3.0, which ISACA released in 2023. I hold Certified CMMI Practitioner status on the current V3.0 model, alongside Certified CMMI V2.0 Professional and CMMI V2.0 Appraisal Team Member credentials - the formal benchmark appraisal itself must be led by a Certified Lead Appraiser. That separation is deliberate, and it protects you: the person who builds your process should not be the same person who certifies it.
What does DO-178C actually require?
Objectives, evidence and independence, scaled to your Design Assurance Level (DAL). A DAL A system carries substantially more objectives than DAL D, and most of the work is actually planning and traceability rather than coding: the PSAC, development and verification plans, requirements traced to code and to tests, configuration management, and quality assurance records that the certification authority can follow. Teams that start writing code before the plans exist almost always end up rebuilding the evidence later.
We supply software to an integrator, not directly to an OEM. Do we still need DO-178C?
Usually yes, in proportion to what you supply. The integrator carries the certification obligation, and they discharge it by flowing the objectives down to you. In practice, you are held to the same evidence standard for your component, without actually controlling the overall approval - which makes early clarity about your scope and DAL more important, not less.
How long does CMMI ML3 take?
The route map gives you actual dates after the workshop, rather than a guess before it. As a rough anchor: organisations with working engineering discipline but undocumented practice typically plan for several months of process definition and institutionalisation before appraisal readiness, and the appraisal window itself is scheduled with your Lead Appraiser. What really drives the timeline is how much of your current practice is real and repeatable, versus simply written down after the fact.
What does this cost?
The diagnostic is free of charge. The Flight Plan Workshop is a fixed fee, quoted before you book. Advisory retainers are scoped only after the workshop - so that you know your actual gaps, and the full cost, before committing to anything long-term. Appraisal and certification-authority fees are separate, and payable directly to those bodies, never to me.
Find out what is actually blocking approval.
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