Reliable Software Development for Machine Protection Systems

The Controls software for the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, with more than 150 millions lines of code, resides amongst the largest known code bases in the world1. Industry has been applying Agile software engineering techniques for more than two decades now, and the advantages of these techniques can no longer be ignored to manage the code base for large projects within the accelerator community. Furthermore, CERN is a particular environment due to the high personnel turnover and manpower limitations, where applying Agile processes can improve both, the codebase management as well as its quality. This paper presents the successful application of the Agile software development process Scrum for machine protection systems at CERN, the quality standards and infrastructure introduced together with the Agile process as well as the challenges encountered to adapt it to the CERN environment.