The use of formal methods has been much heralded as the way forward for the production of good quality software but as yet they have not been widely accepted in industry. The United Kingdom's Department of Trade and Industry asked the National Physical Laboratory to investigate the reasons for this. This we did by conducting literature, academic and industrial surveys in 1992.
The main aim of the surveys was to learn the views of people using or considering using formal methods in the areas of the: benefits, limitations, and barriers to formal methods. A secondary aim was to learn people's views of the means of assessing the contribution that formal methods make to the software life-cycle. The industrial survey also gives information on which formal methods are being used, how they are being used and with what they are being used with.