Software Test Engineering Analysis

With evolutionary acquisition the preferred DoD strategy for rapid acquisition of mature technology, an evolutionary approach to easily update requirements validation techniques is required to enable delivering functional capability in increments. This evolutionary validation approach needs to recognize, up front, the need for future capability improvements and the subsequent adaptation of test validation. In addition, any validation approach must also provide for regression testing of existing capabilities. The success of the evolutionary validation strategy depends on the same phased definition of capability needs and system requirements, and the maturation of technologies that support evolutionary acquisition. Our proposal is to expand and adapt our current effort to build an instrumented test framework by broadening the scope to incorporate an evolutionary validation process that fully supports incremental addition of requirements and enhances a programs Test & Evaluation (T & E) process. The effort proposed will use the DoD requirements flow down process from Capability Description Documents to Capability Production Documents to generate the appropriate tests that validate the specific requirement. The proposed effort is intended to provide knowledge of system capabilities and limitations to the acquisition community for use in improving the system performance, and the user community for optimizing system use in operations.