Seeking Input for Software Verification Policies?

e8johan asks: "I currently work at a company in the automotive industry. It is importat to ensure quality and for our products we use extensive testing before, during and after the assembly. Now I have been asked to help in the creation of a company instuction for ensuring that all 'in-house' developed software works properly. I have written a short summary describing the essentials such as: "do not ignore compiler warnings", "always describe what the code is intended to do in your comments", "do not assume that all users run in the same environment", etc. I now feel that I need more input, has anyone done anything like this before? How do you test your software?"

Comments

Maybe a little obvious / easy

[randombit]

But if you haven't already, read the Practice of Programming. It has some good thoughts about testing applications that should help you out. And it's a pretty decent book, anyway.

Here's a few random things that occur to me (most are probably repeats of other posts, though):

Automate as much as you can (testing, code generation, anything that's possible to automate - do it).

Use strongly typed languages, and strongly typed interfaces.

Use any and all warning flags, if available

Whenver you find a bug, add a test that detects that bug to your test suite. Then, and only then, fix the bug.