Assessing the Economic Effects of V&V and IV&V Processes Using Simulation

There is a critical need for cost effective Verification and Validation (V&V) and Independent Verification and Validation (IV&V) on software development projects. The goal of this research is to create a flexible tool and methods that can be used to quantitatively assess the economic benefit of performing V&V and IV&V activities on software development projects and to optimize that benefit on a given project as well as across an organization’s portfolio of projects. The Software Process Simulation tool we use is based on extensive research into Software Process Simulation Models (SPSMs) conducted at the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) by Watts Humphrey, Marc Kellner, Bill Curtis, and others. 1. Current Interests My current research interests include: software process design, financial analysis of software engineering decisions, process simulation, global software development and value based software engineering. Specifically with respect to EDSER related topics, I am interested in: optimization, business case analysis, risk adjusted return on investment and options theory.