Verification and Validation
Verification is one aspect of testing a product's fitness for purpose. Validation is the complementary aspect. Often one refers to the overall checking process as V & V.
- Validation: "Are we trying to make the right thing?", i.e., is the product specified to the user's actual needs?
- Verification: "Have we made what we were trying to make?", i.e., does the product conform to the specifications?
The verification process consists of static/structural and dynamic/behavioral aspects. E.g., for a software product one can inspect the source code (static) and run against specific test cases (dynamic). Validation usually can be done only dynamically, i.e., the product is tested by putting it through typical and atypical usages ("Does it satisfactorily meet all use cases?").
Read more about this topic: Formal Verification
Famous quotes containing the word verification:
“A fact is a proposition of which the verification by an appeal to the primary sources of our knowledge or to experience is direct and simple. A theory, on the other hand, if true, has all the characteristics of a fact except that its verification is possible only by indirect, remote, and difficult means.”
—Chauncey Wright (1830–1875)