Summary

Establish and maintain the environment needed to support validation.

Description

The requirements for the validation environment are driven by the product or product components selected, by the type of the work products (e.g., design, prototype, final version), and by the methods of validation. These selections can yield requirements for the purchase or development of equipment, software, or other resources. These requirements are provided to the requirements development processes for development. The validation environment can include the reuse of existing resources. In this case, arrangements for the use of these resources should be made.

 

Example types of elements in a validation environment include the following:
  • est tools interfaced with the product being validated (e.g., scope, electronic devices, probes)
  • Temporary embedded test software
  • Recording tools for dump or further analysis and replay
  • Simulated subsystems or components (e.g., software, electronics, mechanics)
  • Simulated interfaced systems (e.g., a dummy warship for testing a naval radar)
  • Real interfaced systems (e.g., aircraft for testing a radar with trajectory tracking facilities)
  • Facilities and customer supplied products
  • Skilled people to operate or use all the preceding elements
  • Dedicated computing or network test environment (e.g., pseudo-operational telecommunications network test bed or facility with actual trunks, switches, and systems established for realistic integration and validation trials)


Early selection of products or product components to be validated, work products to be used in validation, and validation methods is needed to ensure that the validation environment will be available when necessary.

The validation environment should be carefully controlled to provide for replication, results analysis, and revalidation of problem areas.

Example Work Products



  1. Validation environment


Subpractices



  1. Identify requirements for the validation environment.
  2. Identify customer supplied products.
  3. Identify test equipment and tools.
  4. Identify validation resources that are available for reuse and modification.
  5. Plan the availability of resources in detail.