A Road-Map for Transferring Software Engineering methods for Model-Based Early V&V of Behaviour to Systems Engineering

TL;DR

This paper explores how software engineering methods for early verification and validation of software behavior can be adapted and transferred to systems engineering to improve early system validation, reduce risks, and support decision-making.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive review of early V&V in software and systems engineering, and proposes a road-map for transferring software methods to systems engineering.

Findings

Early V&V reduces late-stage errors and risks.

Software methods show promise for systems engineering validation.

A future research road-map is outlined for cross-domain transfer.

Abstract

In this paper we discuss the growing need for system behaviour to be validated and verified (V&V'ed) early in model-based systems engineering. Several aspects push companies towards integration of techniques, methods, and processes that promote specific and general V&V activities earlier to support more effective decision-making. As a result, there are incentives to introduce new technologies to remain competitive with the recently drastic changes in system complexity and heterogeneity. Performing V&V early on in development is a means of reducing risk for later error detection while moving key activities earlier in a process. We present a summary of the literature on early V&V and position existing challenges regarding potential solutions and future investigations. In particular, we reason that the software engineering community can act as a source for inspiration as many emerging technologies in the software domain are showing promise in the wider systems domain, and there already exist well formed methods for early V&V of software behaviour in the software modelling community. We conclude the paper with a road-map for future research and development for both researchers and practitioners to further develop the concepts discussed in the paper.