This paper describes how the concept of FMEA, Failure Modes and Effects Analysis, can be utilized to improve the reliability of the software production process resulting in higher product quality as well as in higher productivity. This concept has already been implemented by ISARDATA, a small software company in Germany specialisied in the field of software test and validation, in several software development projects. The paper begins with introduction of the general principles of FMEA known from applications in various manufacturing industries. The introduction is followed by a brief description of the necessary adaptations of the FMEA method for application in a software production process. The next section describes the essentials of planning FMEA as an integral part of the software lifecycle management. Since FMEA is primarily the output of teamwork, this section defines practical guidelines for constituting the FMEA team consisting of software developers, testers and quality planners, and for conducting the meetings including defintion of the FMEA objectives of the project. Transactions on Information and Communications Technologies vol 11, © 1995 WIT Press, www.witpress.com, ISSN 1743-3517 220 Software Quality Management The following section of the paper describes the main FMEA tasks to be performed by the team. These are the identification of: a) the structure of the software product in terms of its subsystems, functions, external and internal interfaces and interdependencies; b) the possible failure modes of the product and their causes; c) the effects of the failures including calculation of gravity factors; d) possible measures to prevent and/or correct the failures; e) test plans to detect such failures during the software development phases; f) metric for the evaluation of the FMEA results. The next section of the paper describes how this process can be supported by software tools. The final section sums up the conclusions.