Case Study: U.S. Federal Aviation Administration achieves DO-278 traceability and 50% faster requirements creation with Polarion Software

The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration - Customer Case Study

A development group within the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) needed a lifecycle management solution to monitor contractor ADS‑B data and meet DO‑278 ground‑software standards. Their previous process—relying on Harvest SCM and Word documents—failed to provide baseline‑centric traceability, handle mixed file types, or link requirements to source and object code, while a growing set of stakeholders demanded greater agility in their cyclic‑waterfall process.

The team adopted Polarion because it natively uses Subversion, provides format‑independent traceability from requirements to code, and maps processes into automated workflows. Polarion LiveDoc and Word import cut time to create new requirements by about 50%, made single‑requirement edits simple, enabled scripting and automated linking for complex workflows, and positioned the group to scale to higher DO‑278 assurance levels with ongoing flexibility and responsive support.

The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration

The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration

Group Configuration and Verification Manager