Abstract: Modern critical software systems are more complex and needs to fulfil constantly increasing demands from its users. This is forcing the system architects and software developers to design more reliable and trustworthy software systems which can stand long enough to meet expectations from all of its stakeholders. Designing of such reliable and promising software is not easy, specifically considering the complexity, huge efforts and time required to develop it. Developers have now seriously realised the importance of designing robust and reliable software. From last some years, more research is going on to identify ways and techniques to design the trustworthy and reliable software which can be guaranteed fit for use under given operating constraints. The present paper has reviewed some of the research papers explaining prominent techniques and methodologies for assurance driven software design.

Keywords: Assurance Arguments, Claims & Evidence, Design Assurance, Goal Structure Notations, Safety Cases.