Software Verification

Aug 28, 2018

Introduction:

Software verification and validation is an important model that allows the team of software developers and testers to ensure the accurate development of the product throughout the development life cycle. Both software verification and validation help create a software product that efficiently meets the specified requirements of the customer and offers them optimum services.Therefore, let us discuss software verification in detail to better understand its relevance in the software development life cycle (SDLC).

What is Software Verification?

Verification is the process of checking or verifying the credentials, data or information to confirm their credibility and accuracy.In the field of software engineering, software verification is defined as the process of evaluating software product, to ensure that the development phase is being carried out accurately, to build the desired software product.

It is performed during the ongoing phase of software development, to ensure the detection of defects and faults in the early stage of the development life cycle and to determine whether it satisfies the requirements of the customer.

Software verification offers answers to our query of "Are we building the software product in a right manner?" However, if the software passes during the verification process, it does not guarantee its validity. It is highly possible that a software product goes well through the verification process, but might fail to achieve the desired requirements.

Features of Software Verification:

In the realm of the software industry, software verification plays an integral role in building the product as per the requirements and needs of the customer. Other features of software verification that signify its importance are:

Performed during the early stages of the software development process to determine whether the software meets the specified requirements.
Verification denotes precision of the end or final product.
It conducts software review, walk through, inspection, and evaluates documents, plans, requirements, and specifications.
It demonstrates the consistency, completeness, and correctness of the software during each stage of the software development life cycle.
Software verification can be termed as the first stage of the software testing life cycle (STLC).

Types of Verification:

Software verifications are of two types, each of which, is focused on verifying various aspects of the software and ensuring its high quality. Together, these two verification types ensure that the software conforms to and satisfies specified requirements. The two types of software verification are:

Static Verification: Static verification involves inspection of the code before its execution, which ensures that the software meets its specified requirements and specifications.

It is an analysis based approach, usually carried out by just making an analysis of static aspects of the software system, such as the code conventions, software metrics calculation, anti-pattern detection, etc.
It does not involve the operation of the system or component.
Static verification includes both manual as well as automated testing techniques, such as consistency techniques and measurement techniques.

Dynamic Verification: It concerns with the working behavior of the software and is being carried out along with the execution of software. Also, know by 'Test phase' dynamic verification executes test data on the software, to assess the behavior of the software.

Unlike static verification, dynamic verification involves execution of the system or its components.
The team selects a group of test cases consisting of tests data, which are then used to find out the output test results.
There are three subtypes of dynamic verification: functional testing, structural testing, and random testing.

How to Perform Software Verification?

The process of software verification involves the assessment of the development phase and intermediary software product, based on the pre-defined specifications and guidelines.

It ensures that the methodology used for software development adheres to the specified specifications, set-up before the development phase, to build the correct software product.

Thus, this process requires cross-checking of these pre-defined specifications with the partially developed software product, to satisfy the process of carrying out the development of the product, in a right way.

Approaches:

As stated above, the process of software verification involves reviews, walkthrough, and inspection, which together helps to evaluate the accuracy of the product and ensure its quality. Therefore, defined below are these approaches of software verification:

The process of software verification can be performed through following approaches:

Reviews: It is an organized way of examining the documents such as design specifications, requirements specifications, code, etc. by one or more than one person, to explore defects in the software.
Walkthroughs: It is, usually an informal way of evaluating the software product, where different teams, whether associated or non-associated with the software development, goes through the software product and have discussion on possible errors and other defects, present in the software.
Inspection: It is one of the preferred and most common methods of the static testing. Unlike, walkthroughs, it's a formal way of testing the software, through examination of documents, carried out by the skilled moderator. This method usually, checklist, rules, entry & exist criteria along with preparation and sharing of reports, in order to take corrective & necessary actions.

Advantages of Software Verification:

The advantages offered by software verification are numerous. It is among those processes, which makes the process of software development easy and allows the team to create an end product that conforms to the rules and regulations, as well as customer’s requirements. Other advantages of this process are:

It helps reduce the number of defects found during the later stages of development.
Verifying the software in its initial development phase allows the team to get a better understanding of the product.
It helps reduce the chances of system failures and crashes.
Assists the team in developing a software product that conforms to the specified requirements and design specifications.

Difference Between Software Verification and Validation:

Software verification and validation are two of the most important processes used for ensuring the quality and accuracy of the product. However, these are usually confused by people and used interchangeably. Hence, to help you here is a comparison between these two software testing techniques.

Software Verification	Software Validation
1. Software verification is the process of evaluating the development phase to ensure the accuracy of the software.	1. Software validation evaluates the software during the development phase to ensure its compliance with business requirements.
2. It is performed before the execution of software validation.	2. It is performed once the process of software verification is completed.
3. Verification ensures the product is being developed as per the requirements and design specification.	3. Validation ensures that the software meets the user’s needs and is fit to be used by them.
4. Evaluates plans, requirement specification, documents, test cases, etc.	4. Evaluates the software product to verify its readiness to be released.

Find out more differences between verification and validation in our article Verification Vs Validation.

Conclusion:

In nutshell, it can be said that verification process, increases the development team's confidence of carrying out the development in a right way, so as to achieve expected final product along with the early detection of faults, defects and other issues, that may proves to be time and cost-saving.