Anticipating and Mitigating the Professional Challenge to Independent Verification and Validation

Independent Verification and Validation faces three classes of challenges: the Technical Challenge, the Management Challenge, and the Professional Challenge. In this paper we focus on the Professional Challenge, and, in particular, the four phases that characterize it: Denial, Anger, Cooperation and Dependence. We believe that to implement an effective IV&V effort, one must understand the relationship among the phases and the critical issues underlying them. For each of the phases we (a) provide a characteristic description, (b) discuss how they affect the IV&V effort, (c) present representative issues and examples, and (d) describe steps to reduce the adverse impact of the three detrimental phases. The examples provided are those we have encountered while serving in an IV&V capacity; "lessons learned" guide our suggestions for addressing phase-specific issues.