Establish the Validation Environment
Establish and maintain the environment needed to support
validation.
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 may 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 may include the reuse of
existing resources. In this case, arrangements for the use of these
resources must be made. Examples of the type of elements in a
validation environment include:
- Test 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 (by software, electronics, or 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
- The skilled people to operate or use all the above elements
- Dedicated computing or network test environment (e.g., pseudo operational telecommunications-network testbed or facility with actual trunks, switches, and systems established for realistic
- integration and validation trials)
Early selection of the products or product components to be validated,
the work products to be used in the validation, and the 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, analysis of results, and re-validation of problem areas.
- Identify validation environment requirements.
- Identify customer-supplied products.
- Identify reuse items.
- Identify test equipment and tools.
- Identify validation resources that are available for reuse and
modification.
- Plan the availability of resources in detail.