Need For Vv&A (Verification, Validation and Accreditation) In Software Organizations

Verification is the process of evaluating the work products of development phase in order to determine about whether they meet the requirements that are needed for that phase. Verification is to ensure that the product is built with specific design specifications and requirements. In other words, verification is to ensure that the products have capabilities to meet the specific requirements. Validation is the process of evaluating the software at the end or during the development process in order to determine about whether the software satisfies the required or specified business requirements (Sommerville, 2000). Validation is the process to ensure that the products have capabilities to meet the needs of the user and also the specifications were correctly used. In other words, validation is the process which demonstrates that the product may have capability to fulfill its intended use in its intended environment. Accreditation is the process that helps in the certification of competency, authority or credibility is presented (Rushby and John, 1993). Generally, accreditation ensures that their certification practices are competent to test and certify third parties.

Verification process will represent the static testing techniques. Verification process may ensure that the software documents will comply within the organizations standards (Kaner, Bach, and Pettichord, 2002). The Verification Strategies are: Requirements Review; Code Inspections; Design Review; and Code Walkthrough. In addition to these, there are some important verification techniques and they are: Feasibility reviews; Technical Reviews; Inspections; Informal reviews; Formal reviews; and Static Code Analysis. The following table illustrates the explanation of verification strategies. Table: Verification Strategy

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Source: Powell, P. B (1986): “Planning for Software Validation, Verification, and Testing.” In Software Validation, Verification, Testing and Documentation, S. J. Andriole, ed. Princeton, N. J.: Petrocelli, 1986 3-77. The two verification criteria are: the program that run on the particular computer and also it must satisfy the particular specification; the specification that given in the domain properties must satisfies the needed requirements.

Validation process will represent the dynamic testing techniques. Validation process may ensure that the software will operates according to what they have planned in the requirements phase and by executing it with predefined test cases and also by measuring the output with expected results (Craig and Jaskiel, 2002). Validation process is concerned with evaluating the component or system and software in order to determine how it meets the end user requirements. The Validation Strategies are: Unit Testing; Integration Testing; Performance Testing; System Testing; Alpha Testing; Installation Testing; User Acceptance Testing (UAT); and Beta Testing. The following table illustrates the explanation of validation strategies. Table: Validation Strategy Source: Powell, P. B (1986): “Planning for Software Validation, Verification, and Testing.” In Software Validation, Verification, Testing and Documentation, S. J. Andriole, ed. Princeton, N. J.: Petrocelli, 1986 3-77. The two validation criteria are: it must understand and discover all the important requirements; and it must understand and discover all the relevant domain properties. The following table illustrates the differences between verification and validation. Table: Differences between verification and validation Source: Hetzel, W. (1984): The Complete Guide to Software Testing, QED Information Sciences, Wellesley, MA.

Verification and Validation is one of the processes of checking whether the software system has capability to meet the particular specifications and also to fulfill its intended purpose. Verification and Validation process may also referred to as the software quality control (Pressman, 2001). The terms Validation and Verification are most frequently used in software testing and the meaning of those terms are mostly debatable and vague. Verification, Validation and Accreditation principle can be defined as tenet or fundamental doctrine; general, primary or fundamental law or the truth from which others are derived; and professed or accepted rule of conduct or action. Principles are the most important one in order to

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understand the foundations of Verification, Validation and Accreditation. The following table illustrates the basic principles of Verification, Validation and Accreditation. Table: Principles of Verification, Validation and Accreditation. Source: Adrion, W.R., Branstad, M.A., and Cherniavsky, J.C. (1982): "Validation, verification and testing of computer software", ACM Computing Surveys 14, 159-192.

ORGANIZATIONS

Verification and Validation processes should be bring throughout the software evolution process. Verification and Validation processes helps to identify the typical products of the software process along with the objectives of Verification and Validation. Verification and Validation processes may consists of many tools and techniques and they may also be used with the combination of one another. Verification and Validation (V&V) is the process of ensuring that the software design meets its requirements (Adrion, Branstad, and Cherniavsky, 1982). Verification assures that the products are properly reflecting the specified requirements and ensures that “programmer built it right”. Validation assures that the product that provided was fulfilling its intended use and also ensures that “programmer built the right thing”. The following figure illustrates the process of verification and validation. Table: Process of Verification and Validation Source: Banks, J. (1989), "Testing, understanding and validating complex simulation models," in: Proceedings of the 1989 Winter Simulation Conference.

Verification, Validation and Accreditation is most important in software testing and this is because: it have capability to provide an understanding of the capabilities, assumptions and limitations of the models and simulations; and it assures how trustworthy the results of the process; and also it promotes reuse of process by allowing others to understand how the process are used in there (Beizer, 1984).

Software verification provides the evidence that the design outputs of a particular phase of the software development life cycle meet all of the specified requirements for that phase. Verification of the software is for completeness, correctness and consistency of the software and also for supporting documentation, which have been developed and also to provide the support for the subsequent conclusion that the software is validated (Miller and Howden, 1981). Verification also includes some other activities like dynamic and static analyses, walkthroughs,

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document and code inspections and other techniques. Software testing is also one of the verification activities that are intended to assure that the software development meets its requirements. Software validation provides the evidence that the software specifications assure to the user needs and intended uses and also the requirements that are implemented through the software are consistently fulfilled. Generally, software validation activities will occur either at the end or during the software development life cycle in order to ensure that all the specified requirements have been fulfilled (Sargent, 2003). Verification process in software testing would takes place before the validation process. Validation activities (user feedback, usability testing, etc.) are so harder to execute, document and define properly than the verification testing (Andriole and Stephen, 1986). Verification process evaluates the plans, requirements, code, specifications and documents. On the other hand, validation process evaluates the product itself. Software validation involves the process of execution of the tests that are designed in order to cover the specified system requirements.

It is concluded that software testing is one of the techniques for detecting the errors in the software development phase. The main aim of the software testing is assure the quality of the software. Software testing is to detect the correctness of the software and the software should be tested more efficiently in order to have better software. It is concluded that Verification and Validation (V&V) is the process that helps for checking the software system whether it meets its specifications and also it fulfills the intended purpose. Verification and Validation is the part of software testing process in the software development phase. It is concluded that is most Verification and Validation (V&V) is most important testing process in the software development process. Verification, Validation and Accreditation (VV&A) plays an important role in software testing.

1. Adrion, W.R., Branstad, M.A., and Cherniavsky, J.C. (1982), "Validation, verification and testing of computer software", ACM Computing Surveys 14, 159-192. 2. Sommerville I, (2000): Software Engineering, Addison-Wesley, 6th edition, August 2000. 3. Pressman, R. (2001), Software Engineering: A Practitioner's Approach, Boston, McGraw Hill. 4. Kaner C, J. Bach, and B. Pettichord, (2002): Lessons Learned in Software Testing: John Wiley & Sons. 5. Craig R D and S. P. Jaskiel, (2002): Systematic Software Testing. Norwood, MA: Artech House Publishers, 2002 6. Beizer, B (1984): Software System Testing and Quality Assurance. New York: Van Nostrand, 1984. 7. E. Miller and W. E. Howden (1981): Tutorial: Soft- ware Testing and Validation Techniques, 2nd Ed, Los Alamitos, Calif.: IEEE Computer Society Press. 8. Sargent, R. G. (2003): "Verification and Validation of Simualtion Models" 2003 Winter Simulation Conference. Chick, S., P.J.Sanchez, D. Ferrin and D. J. Morrice, eds. pp. 37-48. 9. Andriole, Stephen J., (1986): Software Validation, Verification, Testing, and Documentation, Princeton, NJ: Petrocelli Books, 1986. 10. Rushby, John (1993): "Formal Methods and the Certification of Critical Systems," SRI-CSL Technical Report, November 1993.