Validation and Verification
JTS has frequently served customers as the “independent” entity that conducts the Validation and Verification procedures to evaluate products for the benefit of both the customer and developer. The Program Management Institute (PMI) and Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) have both adopted the standard definitions for Validation and Verification quoted below:
“Validation: the assurance that a product, service, or system meets the needs of the customer and other identified stakeholders. It often involves acceptance and suitability with external customers. Contrast with verification.”
“Verification: the evaluation of whether or not a product, service, or system complies with a regulation, requirement, specification, or imposed condition. It is often an internal process. Contrast with validation.”
Simply stated:
Validation answers the question “Are we building the right thing?”
Verification answers the question “Are we building the thing right?”
For customers (users), JTS validates the intended product, service, or system (portion thereof, or set thereof) results in a product, service, or system (portion thereof, or set thereof) that meets the operational needs of the customer (user). For developers, JTS verifies the intended product, service, or system (portion thereof, or set thereof) meets a set of design specifications established by the developer.
A summary of the significant differences between Validation and Verification are presented in the Table below:
| Validation | Verification |
|---|---|
| It is a dynamic mechanism of testing and validating the actual product | The verifying process includes checking documents, design, code, and program |
| It always involves executing the code | It does not involve executing the code |
| It uses methods like Black Box Testing, White Box Testing, and non-functional testing | Verification uses methods like reviews, walkthroughs, inspections, and desk-checking, etc. |
| It checks whether the software meets the requirements and expectations of a customer | Whether the software conforms to specification is checked |
| It can find bugs that the verification process can not catch | It finds bugs early in the development cycle |
| Target is an actual product | Target is application and software architecture, specification, complete design, high level, and database design etc. |
| With the involvement of testing team validation is executed on software code. | QA team does verification and make sure that the software is as per the requirement in the SRS document. |
| It comes after verification | It comes before validation |
