Solution Verification and Validation
Today I am discussing the tasks from the BABOK associated with Solution Verification and Validation. These are the tasks to determine which solution best fits the business need – although it includes assessing the performance and effectiveness of the solution. There are six tasks associated with Solution Verification and Validation. I show the BABOK® purpose. Then I discuss the impact on who and how in projects leveraging progressive elaboration, incremental delivery, close customer engagement, ongoing learning, and self organization.
Assess Proposed Solution
| Purpose | Agile Impact |
| To assess proposed solutions in order to determine how closely they meet stakeholder and solution requirements. | One of the benefits of Agile is that while some solution decisions must be made up front the Solution can be assessed over time. Agile facilitates the concept of Real Options where design decisions can be deferred until the last responsible moment. Detailed understanding of the business need is unfolding at the same time the teams understanding of how to solve the problem is developing. With effective Agile architecture and design the cost of redoing things that have already been developed is relatively low. Assessing the proposed solution doesn’t become a check-point on the project but an ongoing assessment against the business case and current status of the project. |
Allocate Requirements
| Purpose | Agile Impact |
| Allocate stakeholder and solution requirements among solution components and releases in order to maximize the possible business value given the options and alternatives generated by the design team. | On Agile projects, this is done by allocating requirements into feature themes and components. Allocation shapes the design of the delivery organization itself. Feature teams form around feature themes and components needed to support cross feature theme requirements. |
Assess Organizational Readiness
| Purpose | Agile Impact |
| Assess whether the organization is ready to make effective use of a new solution. | The organizational readiness assessment occurs on Agile projects in much the same way as it does in traditional projects. The difference is that the release cadence can be more frequent. A significant area to define in Agile projects is how often the organization can absorb releases. Organizational readiness should include not just the end-user/customer of the release, but the supporting organization as well (i.e., support, training, sales, marketing, accounting). |
Define Transition Requirements
| Purpose | Agile Impact |
| Define requirements for capabilities needed to transition from an existing solution to a new solution. | The determination of transition requirements occurs in an Agile project much as it does in a traditional project. The ability to deliver value incrementally opens up new possibilities for transition. Rather than monolithic release the organizational impact can smaller but more frequent. Since the cost of development per unit is lower, temporary integration into existing systems can be developed and make the need for running parallel systems less significant. |
Validate Solution
| Purpose | Agile Impact |
| Validate that a solution meets the business need and determine the most appropriate response to identified defects. | Validate solution happens as an ongoing effort in an Agile project. Within each iteration the customer is provided detailed feedback on the current requirements. At the completion of each iteration cycle, the product owner facilitates alignment with the customer need and continued alignment with the business case. |
Evaluate Solution Performance
| Purpose | Agile Impact |
| Evaluate functioning solutions to understand the value they deliver and identify opportunities for improvement. | Upon release, the Product Owner facilitates understanding how well the solution meets the needs of the customer and identifies new opportunities for improvement and to create additional value for the business. The incremental nature of the back log allows new, higher value items discovered during this evaluation to enter into the existing backlog ahead of existing items. This is an additional way that Agile shortens time to value. |
Solution Verification and Validation
All of the tasks in Solution Verification and Validation are important on Agile projects. The primary distinctions in this Knowledge area are the support for the emergence of the solution over time. Particularly interesting are Assess Organizational Readiness and Transition Requirements as these are often overlooked in Agile projects (many software development projects). Remember, the product isn’t done-done until the customer is using it and achieving the benefits expected by the product owner.
