Independent Verification and Validation for the Space Industry: Guide Evolution Experience

Independent Software Verification and Validation (ISVV) is a process targeted at safety-critical software systems. It aims to increase the quality of software products, thereby reducing risks and costs through the operational life of the software. Since 2008, the European Space Agency and its partners have been using the ESA ISVV Guide for the application of ISVV activities and methods. Over these years, the stakeholders have collected a set of lessons learned and experiences, as well as a need to adapt the application of the guide towards new environments and new technologies. For this purpose, and to harmonize the ISVV Guide into a formal ECSS handbook, an update and improvement of the ISVV guide is currently on-going. This work is considering industry feedback and covering topics such as: ISVV to system level, guidelines for agile and iterative projects, reuse, verification and validation of data, auto-generated code, model-based techniques. This paper covers the ISVV Handbook improvement topics and the process being followed to collect and confirm proposed modifications.