The effectiveness of implementing an independent verification and validation process prior to enterprise deployment: A case study in the Department of Defense

Software independent verification and validation has been a key component to assessing the software quality before installation and end user operations. This typically has been done in the development environment and not from an enterprise perspective. Unfortunately unexpected errors or anomalous behavior is not detected until deployed to an enterprise environment as many variables in the enterprise can have unexpected consequences. This paper evaluates data from within an organization in the DoD that implemented an independent verification and validation process to evaluate software projects prior to enterprise deployment. The research method used in this study was a quantitative analysis on a case study within the Department of Defense. Data were collected from a database by a team specifically employed to provide an independent verification and validation (IV&V) methodology to an enterprise environment using a test lab environment. There were two research questions addressed: (a) does the implementation of an IV&V process decrease the number of software defects resulting in redeliveries of the software projects prior to enterprise deployment and (b) does the implementation of an IV&V process reduce the time spent on development projects prior to enterprise deployment? The results showed that the number of redeliveries did not decrease notably as a result of the IV&V implementation however, it was noted that the time spent on testing was decreased as a result of the IV&V implementation.