Elucidating the fuzzy front end: Experiences from the INNORISK project

This thesis report presents a step-by-step approach on verifying and validating products early during the development. The final result is a framework that helps detect defects during the early phases of the product lifecycle and prevent them during the later phases. First, this report presents extensive research on the main verification and validation activities. These activities - simulation, prototyping, reviews and testing - are presented in the report, along with some suggestions for planning them effectively. The challenges for early product verification and validation were identified and researched by conducting two large studies. The first was a survey that was conducted to gain insight on the current state of the early verification and validation process in the industrial environment. The survey resulted in valuable set of results regarding the current state-of-the-practice of verification and validation in software development in the European setting. The second research was a literature study on state-of-the-art of early verification and validation processes, methods and techniques. The study resulted in exhaustive collection of methods and techniques that can be applied for product early verification and validation in the different phases of the project. The main results of both of these studies are presented in this thesis. Based on the results of the studies mentioned above, the requirements for the framework were defined. As a result, 16 requirements for the framework were specified and these are described in this work. The design and building of the framework according to the requirements then started. The results, including a set of methods and techniques for applying early verification and validation in product development, are presented in this thesis. Finally, the framework was tested in a real-life industrial case and the experiments and results from this case are presented.