How is a failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA) conducted for the EPD Pilot?

• A. Identify potential failure modes, assess severity, probability, and detectability, and implement mitigations with test cases.
• B. Conduct only a basic check of system uptime.
• C. Ignore potential failures and hope for the best.
• D. Focus on user interface design only.

Answer: (A)

FMEA is a proactive way to uncover where a system could fail, what would happen as a result, and how likely or detectable those failures are, so you can reduce risk with solid mitigations. For the EPD Pilot, this means systematically identifying potential failure modes, evaluating their severity, the probability of occurrence, and how easily they would be detected, then implementing mitigations and validating them with test cases. Using test cases to verify that the mitigations work and that failures are detectable ensures the risk is actually reduced in practice. This combination—identify failure modes, assess severity, occurrence, and detection, and implement and validate mitigations—is the essence of the FMEA approach. The other options don’t fit because a simple uptime check doesn’t address failure modes and their effects, ignoring failures isn’t a risk-management approach, and focusing only on user interface design misses the broader system risks FMEA targets.