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Independent Verification and Validation of Software Projects IV & V stands for Independent Validation and Verification. According to NIST, IV&V is 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. Note that it initially states that the requirements must be correctly defined—after that, it's just a matter checking that the software and hardware correctly implement the requirements. Software IV&V is a special procedure carried out by an independent organisation, which checks on the [...]

In this article we explore the results of using the user story analysis tool, ScopeMaster on an example set of user stories (access originals here). The stories we have used are published by Mike Cohn on the Mountain Goat website, they describe the functions of an interactive website to be built. About the Example User Stories We have chosen these example user stories as they are freely available and are published by a well known author of books on the subject of writing software user stories. They are examples that anyone can download. (The PDF actually contains examples for three different projects). For [...]

Backlog grooming, or backlog refinement is the work that is done to analyse and improve and estimate user stories, epics and technical tasks yet to be done by the team.  When a software team has a list of work to do, this is known as the backlog.  Backlog grooming is the work done by the team, ususally led by the business analyst or product owner to clarify each requirement that is about to be assigned to a sprint. Who performs Backlog Grooming At first pass this needs to be performed by the product owner or business analyst, thereafter the whole team needs to ensure [...]

Software project waste is costing $1bn per day in companies and governments across the world doing work that is completely unnecessary. Every day software teams around the world are wasting 30- 60% of their of their time (and employer’s time and money) due to inefficient practices.  Most of this waste is avoidable. At any point in time, each member of the team may be doing useful work but, the work they are doing could have been avoided. In most cases managers are unaware that this is going on. This article takes a look at some of main causes of [...]