Verification vs Validation Testing: Key Differences

As the practice shows, no idea, even the most brilliant one, when embodied in a digital product or service, will become successful without quality assurance. It, in turn, always includes two non-intersecting procedures that occur before software is launched: the first of them is aimed at obtaining a clear understanding of whether development is moving in the right direction, and the second of them clarifies whether the solution being created meets end user needs. So, how are they called and performed? Let’s find it out right now.

What Is Verification Testing?

In a nutshell, it is a procedure aimed at checking whether the solution being created meets its predefined specifications and generally accepted design and development standards. Software verification testing is performed throughout the entire creation process and involves the use of various automation testing tools and verification methods, such as modular, integrational, and system testing.

What Is Validation Testing?

Unlike the previous type of testing, this one involves planning real-world scenarios that allow the development team to make sure that the solution being created meets its audience’s needs (for this, you can apply, for example, the alpha- and beta-testing validation methods). After that, the solution has to be compared with its specifications. If any discrepancies are found, they need to be eliminated before this solution is released to the public. Actually, that’s why validation testing is repeated until the team achieves full compliance.

Purpose of Verification and Validation

The main goals of verification and validation testing are to fully satisfy the needs of the software solution owner and the audience as well. As soon as these procedures are successfully completed, the project can be launched.

Difference Between Verification vs Validation Testing

So, what about the verification and validation difference? Generally speaking, while verification is aimed at checking the compliance of a product or service with its list of requirements agreed upon between the development team and the owner, validation allows teams to make sure that this service or product will be positively accepted by its end users. 

In this regard, the first procedure starts from the very beginning of the development process and lasts until the final testing stage and the second – only after the product/service is completed. This also imposes certain differences on the test data used: during verification in software testing, QA engineers use sample data (in this regard, automation methods are often applied), and during the software validation – real data (usually, manual methods do a great job here).

How Are Verification and Validation Testing Performed?

Now, let's look at the four most popular approaches used for validation and verification in software testing:

• Peer reviews, which involve providing a software solution to focus group representatives for a certain period of time in order to obtain feedback on their experience of interacting with it;
• Assessments, which are left by focus group representatives after checking the solution for functionality and identifying errors and inconsistencies in it;
• Walkthrough, which implies a preliminary explanation to focus group representatives of how exactly to interact with the software solution, after which the latter leave their feedback on how well everything was clear and whether they think some areas need to be optimized;
• Desktop-checking, which includes reviewing the software code by specialists (in particular, software engineers).

Tips for Successful Verification and Validation

To ensure these two procedures go smoothly, follow these guidelines:

1. Define the tasks and goals you are pursuing through these procedures and what the results should be upon their completion;
2. Choose the specific tools and approaches you are going to use – they should cover all possible scenarios of user interaction with your software solution, as well as generally accepted software development standards;
3. Create a testing plan, where you will specify deadlines, available resources, and evaluation criteria (along with the acceptable minimum compliance);
4. Proceed directly to testing in order to identify bugs and inconsistencies that will need to be fixed before the project is released;
5. Involve representatives of the potential target audience and stakeholders in the testing procedure to get the most objective assessment of the quality of your team's work;
6. Don't forget to document and monitor the testing results from one bug fixing to another to understand the dynamics of improvements.

Popular Test Automation Tools For Verification and Validation

Although automated testing is considered a standard approach for verification testing only, sometimes, it also brings benefits when implementing validation testing. In this regard, we have compiled a small selection of popular tools that you can use for quality control in software:

• Selenium, an open-source web solution that supports a lot of programming languages, such as Java, Python, C#, and so on, as well as integrates with different frameworks;
• Appium, an open-source service for automated testing of mobile apps on iOS, Android, and Windows (both native, cross-platform, and hybrid ones);
• Robot Framework, an automation framework aiming at implementing acceptance testing and acceptance test-driven development;
• Jenkins, an automation server used for continuous integration and continuous delivery that streamlines the build, test, and deployment stages;
• TestNG, a popular testing framework that is actively used for testing Java-based software solutions;
• Cucumber, an environment for running automated acceptance tests written in Java, Ruby, etc.;
• JMeter, a perfect solution for performance testing of web apps.

Conclusion

We hope that we have helped you understand the difference between validation and verification testing, and now, you can also assess their importance in creating high-quality and competitive software solutions. You can also check out our blog to learn more about software development and design.