Practical Differences in Verification and Validation

No	Verification	Validation
1	Verification is a STATIC testing procedure.	Validation is DYNAMIC testing procedure.
2	It involves verifying the requirements, detailed design documents, test plans, walkthroughs and inspections of various documents produced during the development and testing process.	Validation involves actual testing of the product as per the test plan (unit test, integration test, system test and acceptance test etc).
3	It is a PREVENTIVE procedure.	It is a CORRECTIVE procedure.
4	Are we building the product RIGHT?	Are we building the RIGHT product?
5	It involves more than two to three persons and is a group activity.	It involves the testers and sometimes user.
6	It is also called Human testing, since it involves finding the errors by persons participating in a review or walk through.	It is also called Computer testing, since errors are found out by testing the software on a computer.
7	Verification occurs on Requirements, Design and code.	Validation occurs only on code and the executable application.
8	Verification is made both in the Executable and Non Executable forms of a work product	Validation is done only on Executable forms of a work product.
9	Verification finds errors early in the requirement & design phase and hence reduces the cost of errors.	Validation finds errors only during the testing stage and hence cost of errors reduced is less than Verification.
10	An effective tool for verification tool is a Checklist.	Various manual and automated test tools are available for Validation.
11	It requires cooperation and scheduling of meetings and discussions.	It is to check that the product satisfies the requirements and is accepted by the user.
12	Verification tasks include: 1) Planning 2) Execution	Validation tasks include: 1) Planning 2) Test Development 3) Test Execution 4) Test Maintenance
13	Verification activities include: 1) Requirements Verification 2) Functional design verification 3) Internal Design Verification 4) Code Verification	Validation activities include: 1) Unit testing 2) Usability testing 3) Function testing 4) System testing 5) Acceptance testing
14	Verification deliverables (work products) are: 1) Verification test plan 2) Inspection report 3) Verification test report	Validation deliverables are: 1) Test plan 2) Test Design Specification 3) Test Case Specification 4) Test Procedure Specification 5) Test log 6) Test incident report