Overview

This introductory chapter presents an overview of this book, which aligns with IEEE Std 1012. There are several verification and validation (V&V) standards and texts written to address the application of V&V activities on traditional software systems. Traditional software systems are explcitly coded to perform an intended function and do not change behavior or functionality during normal system usage. Adaptive software may be implicitly designed with the final form obtained through optimization techniques, probabilitistic methods, or learning algorithms. Each adaptive system may have its own intrinsic V&V problems and some adaptive software system algorithms are so new that they have never been applied to production or high-assurance projects. To help address this need, this book contains guidance related to the V&V activities for adaptive software systems. The user of this guidance should consider V&V as a part of the adaptive software life cycle process.