Certification-Based Process Analysis

Space mission architects are often challenged with knowing which investment in technology infusion will have the highest return. Certification-based analysis (CBA) gives architects and technologists a means to communicate the risks and advantages of infusing technologies at various points in a process. Various alternatives can be compared, and requirements based on supporting streamlining or automation can be derived and levied on candidate technologies. CBA is a technique for analyzing a process and identifying potential areas of improvement. The process and analysis products are used to communicate between technologists and architects. Process means any of the standard representations of a production flow; in this case, any individual steps leading to products, which feed into other steps, until the final product is produced at the end. This sort of process is common for space mission operations, where a set of goals is reduced eventually to a fully vetted command sequence to be sent to the spacecraft. Fully vetting a product is synonymous with certification. For some types of products, this is referred to as verification and validation, and for others it is referred to as checking. Fundamentally, certification is the step in the process where one insures that a product works as intended, and contains no flaws.