Case Study: Sigma 3 Kitchens eliminates software crashes and achieves 100% Coverity Clean with Synopsys

Software crashes are a thing of the past now that SIGMA3 is Coverity Clean

SIGMA³ is a Houston-based oil and gas services firm whose GeoEngineering product, CRYSTAL, helps plan and optimize drilling and fracturing operations. CRYSTAL—a C++ application with nearly one million lines of in-house code plus millions of library files—suffered frequent, unexplained crashes that caused data loss and costly non-productive time (NPT). Early attempts to improve quality with free tools (Valgrind, cppcheck) failed to find the root causes.

After an evaluation, SIGMA³ adopted Coverity Quality Advisor, which flagged ~4,000 high-impact issues (about 1,000 could cause crashes) with a false-positive rate under 1%. Senior engineers triaged and fixed defects, instituted nightly scans and a zero-tolerance policy, and by May 2014 CRYSTAL was Coverity Clean. The result: far fewer crashes, projects completing three times faster, more accurate project forecasting, higher margins, and a culture shift from crash-fixing to proactive quality and feature development.

Sigma 3 Kitchens

Sean Spicer

Chief Software Architect