Developing a value-based methodology for satisfying NASA software assurance requirements

NASA imposes a multitude of quality process requirements on the development of its software systems. One source of such is the Software Quality Assurance standard. All NASA sponsored projects are expected to implement these requirements. However given the diversity of projects and practices at different NASA centers it is impossible to a-priori dictate how these requirements are to be economically satisfied on a given project. Under the auspices of NASA's Software Assurance Research Program the authors have been developing a value-based methodology to guide practitioners in defensibly and economically planning and executing assurance effort to satisfy this standard. The methodology exploits the intimate relationship between assurance value and risk-informed decision making. This paper describes this relationship, the value-based methodology for scaling assurance efforts, support for using the methodology, and our practice-based validation of the approach.