Significance of Independent Verification and Quality Assurance
It is only very recently that independent verification and validation gained importance. Until then software engineers themselves carried out verification and validation. As software product development became a complex process involving myriads of activities performed by multitude of people, verification and validation underwent similar changes. It became a formal process and an independent activity incorporated from the beginning of the development life cycle.
As stated above, software product development is a complex process consisting of multiple major releases, minor releases, multiple builds of the products and hence chances of error are much great. And in today’ hypercompetitive business environment, companies and organizations cannot take any chances as their credibility and reputation is at stake. Therefore, the software must be built in conformance with business/customer requirements. However, it is not an easy task as it sound to be as it involves a lot many issues such as
- people involved in the development process do not possess proper knowledge regarding the entire application
- lack of clarity in the requirements
- user requirements go on changing without any clarification
That is where verification, validation and quality assurance comes to the aid.
Though all the three terms seem synonymous, it is not so. As per the IEEE Standard Glossary of Software Engineering Terminology, verification is defined as “The process of evaluating a system or component to determine whether the products of a given development phase satisfy the conditions imposed at the start of that phase.” While validation is defined as, “The process of evaluating a system or component during or at the end of the development process to determine whether it satisfies specified requirements.”On the other hand, Quality Assurance or QA is systematic evaluation and assessment of the various aspects of a project in order to ensure that minimum standards of quality are achieved. Thus, verification, validation and quality assurance help in minimizing risks by facilitating problem identification early on so that there is enough time to put the project back on track.
Considering the importance of verification, validation and QA in today’s business environment, entrusting such activities to an in-house project manager, as found in many companies and organizations, would serve no purpose. On the contrary, it would be waste of time, money and effort since they are involved with the projects on a daily basis and therefore would fail to recognize the warning signals of impending problems. Hence, companies and organizations must invest in service providers who can provide comprehensive and exhaustive independent verification and qa services across the product lifecycle.
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