DDP-a tool for life-cycle risk management

At JPL we have developed, and implemented, a process for achieving life-cycle risk management. This process has been embodied in a software tool and is called Defect Detection and Prevention (DDP). The DDP process can be succinctly stated as: determine where we want to be, what could get in the way and how we will get there. The `determine where we want to be´ is captured as trees of requirements and the `what could get in the way´ is captured as trees of potential failure modes. Scoring the impacts of these failure modes on the requirements results in a prioritized set of failure modes. The user then selects from a set of PACTs (Preventative measures, Analyses, process Controls and Tests) each of which has an effectiveness versus the various failure modes. It is the goal of the DDP process to optimally select the subset of the PACTs‡ which minimizes the residual risk subject to the project resource constraints