When you’re developing software that will send people into space, you need to make sure that it works as expected. In safety-critical systems like these, the process of indpependent verification and validation (IV&V) is intended to ensure that a product meets its requirements and functions as intended. While most IV&V methods have been associated with the waterfall model of project management, an adoption of an Agile mindset and principles allows IV&V teams to be more aligned with contemporary software development processes and produce better outcomes. In this post, I discuss how Agile principles can work with IV&V processes, examples of how we put Agile IV&V into practice at NASA, and advice for transitioning to Agile.
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