What makes Independent Verification and Validation (IV &V) Effective?

The term Independent Verification and Validation (IV and V) refers to the process of verifying and validating a product, service or process to provide an insight about its effectiveness and improvements. IV and V activities are common in the public sector and also in major state and government projects. It is basically a two-pronged set of activities, with separate purposes of verification and validation that serve a common goal of quality assurance.

Independent Verification is directed towards checking whether the product or service meets the standards that are documented or claimed by the producers. Whereas the purpose of Validation is to determine that the product or service is in line with the customer’s requirements (not what is documented by the producer). The process on the whole provides the producers with the information they need in order to improve on both fronts. Given the importance of this process, the IV and V service providers and the receivers need to be aware of certain practices and priorities that are important in determining the fruitfulness of the whole process.

  • First and foremost important aspect is the independence of the person, agency or team performing the evaluation process. It is important and necessary to provide the results that are unbiased; on the contrary, the whole process is unlikely to serve its sole purpose of marking down the deficiencies of the subject.
  • Secondly, the preparation of a Statement of Work (SOW) that determines the span of control of the team carrying out the Independent Verification and Validation and the relative level of acceptance for each aspect that falls within the domain of inspection.
  • Selection of an efficient service provider or team to carry out the required tasks is also pivotal. The result and impact of the process is heavily dependent on the competency of the personnel performing it. Complacency on this aspect can be disastrous.
  • It is to be made sure that the team performing IV and V activities has the access to the data, plans and information required to carry out their tasks effectively. Any deficiency in the provision of required information can result in inaccuracy of the final results.
  • The IV and V team should also have complete access to all the artifacts and production sites relevant to their study. Moreover, they should also be a part of all the relevant meeting and discussions taking place.
  • The final one, the findings and recommendations of the IV and V teams should necessarily be put into implementation. Improvement is the sole purpose of IV and V activities and it can only be achieved if the recommended corrections are made.

 

These are the top priorities or the best practices of any IV and V process. Successful results from Independent Verification and Validation can be obtained if these requirements are met.

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