The Validation Cycle

When planning the development or revision of a standard or set of standards, it is useful to consider what is going to be necessary in order to ensure comprehensive and effective validation of the standard(s). There is a fundamental process which should be followed, thus:

• Determine which level of validation is best suited to the project
• Select the methods that will achieve the required level of validation based upon:
  • The content of the standard, for example:
    • Protocol and service standards can be validated using any of the methods specified here
    • Standards specifying physical characteristics can be validated most easily by peer review or prototyping
  • The complexity of the specification, for example:
    • A standard specifying a simple protocol may not justify the expense of a Plugtests™ event
    • A complex technology specified across a number of standards may be difficult to validate fully in a peer review (even though the individual parts would benefit from separate reviews)
  • The availability of personnel with the necessary skills and experience
  • The availability of the required physical resources
  • The personal preferences of the rapporteur and technical committee responsible for the standard(s)
• Plan validation into the standards development process ( EG 202 107 )
  • What type of validation will be used?
  • What are the prerequisites for validation?
    • Standards
    • Guidance material
    • Reporting pro-formas
    • Procedures
    • Resources
  • When should validation activities take place?
    • In relation to the development of the standard
    • In relation to the availability of related standards
    • In relation to the availability of products implementing the standard(s)
    • At various points within the development or once only
  • What equipment is necessary for successful validation?
  • What will be the output of the validation activity?
    • Validation results
    • Change requests
• Begin development or revision of the standard(s)
• At suitable points in the development process, undertake the planned validation activities
• Resolve problems detected during validation
  • Report the problems
    • One of the activities that is common to all of the validation methods is the reporting of problems found in the validated standard back to the responsible technical committee. There is no single problem reporting system for ETSI documents and each technical committee manages change requests (CR) in different ways. Any problems or improvements identified during the validation process should be reported using whatever problem management system is in common use within the committee responsible for the standard.
  • Update the standard
    • It is the responsibility of committee to review each CR, accept or reject it, respond to the originator and, if required, devise an appropriate change to the standard.
• Repeat validation and revision activities until until all significant errors are resolved