Leverage experience across projects and organizations by forming teams to coordinate the development, integration, and test efforts. The approach allows program participants to develop an understanding of systems issues and enables them to bridge information gaps that might cause design inefficiencies and flaws. For example, be sure to involve the operational test community. Enlist their insight and experience. As a result, conflicts were avoided that could have adversely affected Milestone III decision process.
Communications are essential.
On this effort, every interface that was expressly checked out prior to developmental test, worked. Every interface that was assumed to be okay without having been tested, failed. This is another aspect of attention to details. Pay attention to small things like connectors and alignment to north. Check and recheck.