Nuclear Regulatory Commission: Independent Verification and Validation

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Challenge:

The MIL Corporation’s (MIL) client, The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) presented the challenge of an information system upgrade. In this case, NRC needed to upgrade their financial accounting and integrated management information system (FAIMIS) from Momentum version 6.4.1 to version 7.1.3.  MIL took on the challenge and will lead the IV&V effort through several testing iterations over a four-month period.  Each testing iteration provides only three weeks for MIL to test approximately 90 enhancement upgrades that will affect over 15 modules within the FAIMIS system.  Additionally, MIL will have to perform regression testing on existing functionality as well as verify a number of NRC custom processes and run scripts to confirm data conversion.

Solution

To meet the NRC’s needs, MIL created a test strategy to address four main objectives: installation/functionality, upgrades/enhancements, NRC customizations, and conversion. In order to determine all potential outcomes, the test log that was developed contained 400 scenarios. The first iteration of testing revealed almost 30 issues that the developer had to investigate and rectify. The final iteration of testing focuses on several key areas, which include data conversion and previously corrected issues; end-to-end testing of NRC customized processes. These NRC processes include license fee billing, automated disbursements, Travel Invoice (TN) file processing, Central Contractor Registration Connector (CCRC), Business Intelligence and Reporting Tool (BIRT), and Payment Automation Manager (PAM). In addition, MIL will also help review training materials and assist with any FAIMIS verifications with interfaces from other systems.

Benefit

MIL’s expertise and steadfast testing are allowing NRC to meet a tight deadline for production deployment while managing short IV&V testing windows. So far, numerous issues have been identified. This allows the developer to investigate problematic areas and fix any concerns before deploying to production.[MK1] [ELC2]  MIL’s familiarity with NRC customizations consistently ensures that NRC will receive the highest quality IV&V testing for mission critical issues. MIL looks forward to NRC’s system upgrade go-live date, which is set for March 10, 2015.