diff --git a/doc/source/readme.rst b/doc/source/readme.rst
index 551fca818..a23a2f873 100644
--- a/doc/source/readme.rst
+++ b/doc/source/readme.rst
@@ -378,6 +378,14 @@ When running it, it should output something like this::
     undercloud                 : ok=2    changed=0    unreachable=0    failed=0
 
 
+If you run into an issue where the validation isn't found, it may be because the
+run-validations.sh script is searching for it in the path where the packaging
+installs validations.  For development, export an environment variable named
+VALIDATIONS_BASEDIR with the value of base bath of your git repo.::
+
+    cd /path/to/git/repo
+    export VALIDATIONS_BASEDIR=$(pwd)
+
 
 Writing the full validation code is quite easy in this case because Ansible has
 done all the hard work for us already. We can use the ``ansible_memtotal_mb``
diff --git a/scripts/run-validations.sh b/scripts/run-validations.sh
index 333a0c8c6..45ace9901 100755
--- a/scripts/run-validations.sh
+++ b/scripts/run-validations.sh
@@ -69,7 +69,7 @@ if [ ${DEBUG:-no} == "yes" ]; then
     ANSIBLE_DEBUG="-vvvv"
 fi
 
-VALIDATIONS_BASEDIR="/usr/share/openstack-tripleo-validations"
+VALIDATIONS_BASEDIR=${VALIDATIONS_BASEDIR:="/usr/share/openstack-tripleo-validations"}
 
 VAL=$(find $VALIDATIONS_BASEDIR/playbooks -type f -regex ".*playbooks\/${VALIDATION}\.y[a]?ml")
 if [[ -z ${VAL} ]]; then