City, state, and federal governments spend millions modernizing their systems to gain efficiencies, cut costs or, simply, to serve people better. They initiate projects but frequently have delays, cost overruns and poor-quality systems.
Too often, they don’t engage a vendor to help with independent verification and validation (IV&V), which would provide an unbiased, objective and independent assessment throughout the system development lifecycle.
What is IV&V?
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) defines IV&V as “a comprehensive review, analysis and testing (software and/or hardware) performed by an objective third party to confirm (i.e., verify) that the requirements are correctly defined and to confirm (i.e., validate) that the system correctly implements the required functionality and security requirements.”
An IV&V team can:
- Identify project gaps
- Anticipate risks/problems early on
- Keep a pulse on the system being built to ensure it meets user requirements (verification) and that the right product is being built (validation)
- Monitor the overall quality of all aspects of the project
IV&V is typically conducted on system development or modernization projects but can be applied to any product development cycle. The key is that IV&V is independent from the entity developing the product.
IV&V usually costs a fraction (up to 10%) of the price of a system development or modernization effort. But it can result in significant savings in cost and time and can improve the quality and success rate of a project. IV&V’s focus is most often comprehensive, covering all project aspects, to reduce risks.
