Abstract

The workload of Verification and Validation (V&V) has increased constantly in the high technology industries. The changes in the business environment, with fast time-to-market and demands to decrease research and development costs, have increased the importance of efficient product creation process, including V&V. The significance of the V&V related know-how and testing is increasing in the high tech business environment. As a consequence, companies in the ICT sector have pressures for improving product development process and verification and validation activities. The main motive for this research arises from the fact that the research has been scarce on verification and validation from product development process perspective.

This study approaches the above mentioned goal from four perspectives: current challenges and success factors, V&V maturity in different NPD phases, benchmarking automotive sector, and shifting the emphasis of NPD efforts.

This dissertation is qualitative in nature and is based on interviewing experienced industrial managers, reflecting their views against scientific literature. The researcher has analysed the obtained material and made conclusions.

The main implications of this doctoral dissertation can be concluded as a visible need to shift the emphasis of V&V activities to early NPD. These activities should be viewed and managed over the entire NPD process. There is a need for companies to understand the V&V maturity in different NPD phases and develop activities based on this understanding. Verification and validation activities must be seen as an integral element for successful NPD. Benchmarking other sectors may enable identifying development potential for NPD process. The automotive sector being a mature sector, has developed practices for successfully handling requirements during NPD. The role of V&V is different in different NPD phases. Set-based type V&V can provide required understanding during early product development. In addition, developing parallel technological alternatives and platforms during early NPD also support shifting the emphasis towards earlier development phases.