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OSCAL - Develop Enhancements, Future Implementations and New Education

About OSCAL DEFINE

OSCAL DEFINE outlines research and educational pursuits in the OSCAL program using an iterative and collaborative approach. The work in this project focuses on the research performed in response to a stated problem.

Our goal is to establish an OSCAL research framework and process that allows the team members assigned to research and educational topics to receive the necessary support in gathering the requirements, analyzing them, identifying use cases, documenting them, generating specifications that support rapid development of prototypes, and serve as a stable catalyst for engineering and development planning, integration, and implementation.

The output of each effort is:

  • published in this project,
  • reviewed with the community,
  • used as input to guide the next effort, and
  • provides opportunity to adjust the course as knowledge is acquired.

Process Overview

Initiation

  • A problem, challenge or concern is identified, reviewed and prioritized for Discovery.
  • The threshold for this step is very low, and simply requires opening an issue with a problem statement.
  • Once an issue has been approved for a research effort, increments of work are ready to begin as a part of Discovery.

Discovery (Spirals)

  • A research effort takes place in increments called spirals.
  • Each spiral:
    • has an identified objective,
    • and contributes to the understanding and/or solution to the problem statement.

Explanation

  • Per Spiral:
    • At the end of each Spiral, the information will be committed to the OSCAL DEFINE project.
    • Findings will be presented for feedback and decision-making.
    • When enough knowledge has been gained, a change request issue may be submitted or the development of a solution may begin.
    • Spirals may continue to further define the solution or explore the problem further.
  • Per Research Effort, at the end of Discovery:
    • The result may include a new or revised prototype, process or practice.
    • The result should provide enough evidence to be used in engineering or practical application.

Participation

More documentation can be found in our Getting Started folder. This will guide you through the process and provide information for conducting a successful, collaborative research effort.

usnistgov/OSCAL-DEFINE is developed and maintained by the [NIST OSCAL Team][[email protected]], principally:

  • Michael Iorga, PhD (@iMichaela)
  • D. Chris Compton, MSHI (@Compton-NIST)

Please reach out with questions and comments.

This process is inspired by Boehm's Spiral Model of Software Development and Enhancement (with a good overview in this video), but adapted to provide knowledge and decision support for new or enhanced OSCAL models. A Spiral is an iterative, asynchronous effort that allows for research to begin with limited information, and delivers new discoveries and understanding at the end of each spiral. This input guides ongoing efforts in research, which can in turn guide development activities.