Verification and Validation

BLOG XI.

Before saying anything, i want to talk about difference between verification and validation, it is common that you don’t have acknowledge of it. First let’s talk about what is it.

Verification is a test of a system to prove that it meets all its specified requirements at a particular stage of its development. The verification of development refers to checking application that is still being developed to fulfill all the specifications that stakeholders or developers assigned.

Validation is an activity that ensures that an end product stakeholder’s true needs and expectations are met. So we can say that verification is to test while or during the development, and validation is to test when the software or the program is completed. This is one of those scenarios where words get easily confused because they look similar. So, to further assist in keeping them straight, we’ve created the chart below for a quick reference. Feel free to print it and pin it up over your desk.

There are skills to do a good validation:

• Good documentation skills – The documentation needs to be able to stand on its own even after a couple of years.
• Methodology oriented and ease of adopting different/new ways to achieve the same end goal – Even if the overall validation steps are the same, different companies and validations may require different methodology
•  High integrity – ability to create trust and confidence, is key to a successful risk based validation
• Good PM skills – getting a close alignment of the validation activities with the overall project objectives, planning and budget is key for a successful and timely execution
• Process and activity focused. – Validation is not a set of documents that must be produced. It’s the steps and activities that produce the value.
• Ability to explain, train and coach the project team, of the purpose and value of the steps and activities in a tangible way – Validation is not only a Validation (Lead/team) exercise. Project and system quality comes from all involved stakeholders, and cannot be documented/tested in. Quality needs to be build/trained into the SW, processes and people using it.

And for the verification:

1. Defining a proper verification plan and identifying all features and corner cases for testing.
2. Identifying right methodology for verifying different features and logic units— not all features can be verified using a same approach.
3. Architecture and implementation of efficient test benches — various components like drivers, checkers, monitors, coverage and efficient stimulus patterns.
4. Debugging simulation failures, identifying bugs, proposing fixes etc.
   Defining coverage and other metrics for Verification completeness

Here is a link for more information about validation vs verification:
https://www.plutora.com/blog/verification-vs-validation