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, and 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 the following:

·   Test tools interfaced with the product being validated (e.g., scope, electronic devices, and 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 preceding 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 revalidation of problem areas.

Typical Work Products

1.    Validation environment

Subpractices

1.    Identify validation environment requirements.

2.    Identify customer-supplied products.

3.    Identify reuse items.

4.    Identify test equipment and tools.

5.    Identify validation resources that are available for reuse and modification.

6.    Plan the availability of resources in detail.