The process of software verification and validation

                                                                    Software Quality Assurance

Verification and Validation:

Software Verification Testing is the process of examining documentation, designs, code, and programs to determine whether or not the software was developed by the requirements. The primary aim of the verification process is to guarantee the quality of the software product, design, architecture, and so on. Verification operations include reviews, walkthroughs, and inspections.

Validation in software engineering is a dynamic method for testing and determining whether or not a software solution fulfills the specific demands of the client. The procedure aids in ensuring that the software performs as expected in the intended environment. The validation process involves tasks such as unit testing, integration testing, system testing, and user acceptance testing.

 

In software engineering, the words verification and validation refer to two distinct forms of analysis. The most common definitions are:

Validation: Are we constructing the correct system?

Verification: Are we constructing the system correctly?

In other words, validation is concerned with ensuring that the system meets the real demands of the client, whereas verification is concerned with ensuring that the system is well-engineered, error-free, and so on. Verification can assist establish whether the program is of good quality, but it cannot guarantee that the system is usable.

The difference between the two words is mostly due to the function of specifications. Validation is the process of determining if the specification satisfies the demands of the client, whereas verification is the process of determining whether the program fits the specification.

Verification encompasses all actions involved in generating high-quality software, such as testing, inspection, design analysis, specification analysis, and so on. It is a relatively objective procedure in the sense that, provided the different products and documentation are stated accurately enough, no subjective judgments should be required to validate software.

Validation, on the other hand, is a very subjective procedure. It entails making subjective judgments on how effectively the planned system meets a real-world requirement. Activities like requirements modeling, prototyping, and user assessment are all part of the validation process.

 

In a software lifecycle, verification is frequently understood to entail ensuring that the results of each step meet the criteria of the preceding phase. Validation is limited to the project's beginning and end: requirements analysis and acceptance testing. This is a prevalent and incorrect viewpoint seen in many software engineering textbooks. It believes that the customer's needs can be completely recorded at the start of a project and would not change while the product is being created. In actuality, needs vary during a project, partially as a result of the project itself: the creation of new software opens up new possibilities. As a result, validation and verification are required throughout the lifecycle.

The QA team verifies the software to verify that it meets the standards in the SRS document, whereas the testing team validates the software. Verification and validation are both associated with the ideas of quality and software quality assurance. Verification and validation by themselves do not ensure software quality; planning, traceability, configuration management, and other components of software engineering are necessary. The definitions of verification, validation and accreditation are comparable throughout the modeling and simulation (M&S) community.