Consistent and independent oversight is a primary driver of ERP success.
It is important for both private and public sector organizations to find a third party that can conduct Independent Verification and Validation (IV&V) throughout the project life cycle. By auditing the primary vendor’s deliverable's and project management processes, we proactively protect your organization’s interests. Our independence allows us to take an objective view while identifying high-risk areas early in the project so you can mitigate risks and prepare contingencies.
We provide tangible metrics and suggest alternative approaches to ensure you are on the path to realizing optimal benefits in the form of cost savings, operational efficiency and increased quality of software design. In the public sector, this translates to improved services for constituents and citizens.
Preventing Defects
IV&V is a systematic approach for ensuring that a product is being built correctly and the correct application is being built. It involves a series of technical, managerial and financial activities that assess ongoing project health. Because IV&V is backed by the support of the customer and is independent of developers, it increases the effectiveness of your project.
- Verification – Determining whether the project adheres to project management disciplines and is performed according to the project plan. Verifying adherence through an independent examination of project documents and other evidence.
- Are there defects in the design or code that cause unexpected results or fail to cause expected results with the import or export of data, user interface or hardware performance?
- Does the software function and perform as expected?
- Are we building the system correctly?
- Are applicable industry and best practices and standards being employed?
- Validation – Determining whether the project deliverable and results meet the objectives, and ensuring that the end product meets the project’s documented performance outcomes and requirements.
- Is the application internally complete, consistent and sufficiently correct to support the next phase?
- Does the system satisfy business and operational requirements?
- Are we building the right system?
- Are we following the defined process and executing to defined standards?
The ROI of IV&V
Benefits of IV&V include reduced defect creation, increased defect detection, risk mitigation and greater visibility at the financial, managerial and subject-matter level. This level of visibility is essential as a defect will always increase in cost as it moves through the implementation phases.
While full-phase IV&V development costs 3- to 4-percent of total project costs, the cost savings realized through early detection can be more than twice the cost of the IV&V work itself.
What We Deliver
Our independent assessment and associated recommendations provide management and the project team with actionable advice based on industry standards and best practices. We have three analytical approaches to IV&V:
- Static Analysis – This is the direct analysis of the form and structure of a product without executing it. It includes reviews, inspections, audits and data flow analysis.
- Dynamic Analysis – This is the execution or simulation of a developed product to detect errors by analyzing the response of the product to sets of input data where the range of output is known. This is also known as Testing and Prototyping.
- Formal Analysis – This is the use of rigorous mathematical techniques to analyze the algorithms of a solution, including formal proof of correctness and algorithmic analysis.
- Requirements Verification – We confirm that the software and interface requirement specifications are consistent with system requirements in a way that is unambiguous, complete, testable (verifiable) and traceable.
- Design Verification – We ensure that interfaces between hardware and software are appropriate, and verify the consistency of Interface Design Documents.
- Software Test Plan and Software Test Description Verification – We ensure effective test coverage, examine trace-ability tables and document software requirements design artifacts through data structure and algorithm analysis.
- Implementation Verification – We ensure that design is accurately reflected in the implementation, and verify that approved standards and practices are followed for coding, documentation, naming, data dictionary terms and algorithm completeness and correctness.
- Application Verification – We verify the adherence and correctness of software test plans and software test descriptions.
- Process Validation – We ensure that client standards and industry best practices are employed to develop the product or execute the project.
Our services also include:
- Strategic planning
- Risk analysis
- Monitoring of project plan, timeline, budget, payback period and KPI's
- Oversight of any plans, documents or deliverable
- Oversight of any contractors or third parties
- Vendor contract adherence
- Oversight of specific project components (process management, change management, training, staffing, data integrity, data migration, user acceptance testing, etc.)
- Oversight of business process mapping and functional requirement gathering
- Assessment of specific technological and process changes affecting the organization
- Oversight of project governance and management
- Monitoring of auditing and regulatory compliance
- Analysis of technical infrastructure and needs
- Assessment of go-live preparation, planning and monitoring
- Assessment of post-deployment usage and benefits realization
- Deployment of full Center of Excellence
- Deployment of a fully equipped Project Management Office
Only by working with innovative and independent consultants can your organization achieve a high return on investment or return on citizenship.
Why Work With Tiptop Planet
- We have extensive experience assessing and rescuing a number of high-profile, failed implementations.
- Working with an unbiased third party enables early detection of potential risks and areas for improvement in your project’s internal governance and management – and in any contractor’s work.
- Rather than solely focusing on the quality of implementation activities, we assess the actual value of these activities and whether or not they contribute to a successful project.
- By leveraging best practices from both the private and public sector, we track resources, budget and benefits realization to assess the value of proposed activities and their impact on system implementation and usage.
- Our 360-degree assessment incorporates a focus on process management and change management to reduce overall project costs.
- We have technical, managerial and financial independence and perform IV&V in parallel with the development process.
- Our analyses are always supplemented with recommendations for how your organization can mitigate potential risks.