The essential IEC 61508 checklist for embedded software compliance
Is your safety-related embedded software market ready?
Building embedded software for safety-related systems has one overriding purpose: to prevent harm. If you can’t prove it meets that goal, you risk delayed certification, more scrutinous audits, or even blocked market access. And if faults slip into production, the legal and reputational consequences can be severe.
IEC 61508 and its functional safety guardrails can help reduce that risk to a tolerable level, even in the presence of environmental interference and human error. And while compliance isn’t always a legal requirement, it’s a proven way to earn consumer trust, satisfy auditors, and remain competitive in global markets.
However, understanding IEC 61508 requirements is easier said than done. At over 500 pages, it’s a dense and highly technical framework that can discourage even the most disciplined software teams. And when timelines are tight, it’s easy for project managers to see it as a box-ticking distraction rather than an efficient way to build safer software.
That’s why we created this functional safety companion guide, carefully curated for embedded software teams shipping safety-related products. It translates IEC 61508 into clear, practical, and repeatable actions that make it simpler to apply functional safety principles across the product lifecycle.
When applied proactively, this approach can help you:
- Prevent costly late-stage changes and disruptive rework
- Clarify project scope, ownership, and safety responsibilities
- Improve coordination across software, hardware, and systems teams
- Achieve smoother certification and accelerate market access
- Strengthen change control with accountable, traceable updates
In this guide, you’ll learn:
- Which IEC 61508 clauses matter most for safety-related embedded software, and what each one requires.
- The risk of non-compliance for each clause, and where gaps may exist across your teams and projects.
- How to follow its requirements, correctly assign safety integrity levels (SILs) to embedded system functions, and prioritise improvements.
Whether you’re new to functional safety or strengthening existing processes, this checklist-driven guide gives your teams a clear, structured way to improve audit readiness without slowing delivery.
Understanding the IEC 61508 maturity assessment
Your functional safety compliance journey is unlikely to follow a binary “pass or fail” roadmap. For most embedded software teams, IEC 61508 alignment matures over time as you implement, refine, and adapt required practices across the project lifecycle.
To help track your progress, this guide includes a bespoke maturity assessment table for IEC 61508-aligned activities, underpinned by the well-established Capability Maturity Model (CMM).
Rather than focusing on theoretical compliance, the assessment scores your current state for each key activity. This provides a clear view of where your processes stand today, and where targeted improvements will deliver the most value. You’ll find this assessment at the end of the guide, on pages 37-39.
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