Software verification and validation

  **Software verification and validation** (software V&V) are complementary activities used to assess whether software work products conform to their specified requirements and whether the resulting software satisfies its intended use and user needs. Verification asks whether an artifact meets the requirements imposed on that artifact; validation asks whether the delivered system is suitable for its intended use. The distinction is useful, but terminology varies across standards and regulated domains, so a V&V plan should name the governing definitions rather than relying only on slogans. [IEEE 1012-2024](https://standards.ieee.org/ieee/1012/7324/) [NASA verification planning](https://swehb.nasa.gov/plugins/viewsource/viewpagesrc.action?pageId=135332996)    Software V&V is broader than end-of-project testing. Current IEEE 1012 describes analysis, evaluation, review, inspection, assessment, and testing as V&V processes, and applies them to systems, software, hardware, interfaces, and related documentation. NASA likewise treats V&V as life-cycle work performed in parallel with development rather than as a final gate. [IEEE 1012-2024](https://standards.ieee.org/ieee/1012/7324/) [NASA verification planning](https://swehb.nasa.gov/plugins/viewsource/viewpagesrc.action?pageId=135332996)    ## Verification and validation    … 52 unchanged lines …  - the scope of the resulting claim.    Evidence should be proportionate to risk, integrity level, change impact, and consequence of failure. IEEE 1012 specifies V&V life-cycle process requirements for different integrity levels. This supports tailoring, but tailoring should be documented: omitting a technique because it is inapplicable is different from silently leaving a high-risk claim unevaluated. [IEEE 1012-2024](https://standards.ieee.org/ieee/1012/7324/)    ## Independence and IV&V  

− **Independent verification and validation** (IV&V) introduces organizational separation from the development effort. Independence is not all-or-nothing. NASA identifies technical, managerial, and financial independence as key parameters and uses IV&V as risk mitigation for selected safety- and mission-critical software. [NASA software IV&V](https://swehb.nasa.gov/display/SWEHBVC/SWE-141+-+Software+Independent+Verification+and+Validation?desktop=true&macroName=show-if)

+ **Independent verification and validation** (IV&V) introduces organizational separation from the development effort. Independence is not all-or-nothing. NASA identifies technical, managerial, and financial independence as key parameters and uses IV&V as risk mitigation for selected safety- and mission-critical software. [NASA software IV&V](https://swehb.nasa.gov/spaces/SWEHBVC/pages/50888971/SWE-141+-+Software+Independent+Verification+and+Validation)

    Technical independence can provide different personnel, tools, assumptions, and analyses; managerial independence can protect reporting from delivery pressure; financial independence can reduce conflicts over findings. IV&V can increase confidence and expose shared blind spots, but it does not guarantee defect-free software. Its scope, access, authority, and reporting route must still be defined.    NASA’s public embedded-software lesson describes IV&V as technical and management activities performed by someone other than the developer and lists requirements analysis, tracing, peer review, simulation, risk analysis, code inspection, audits, and testing across the life cycle. That lesson is historical NASA guidance for embedded systems, not evidence that every project needs the same activities or degree of independence. [NASA Lesson 723](https://llis.nasa.gov/lesson/723)    ## Relationship to testing, assurance, and formal methods  … 19 unchanged lines …    ## Related subjects    [Verifying completion in tool-using agents](/wiki/verifying-completion-in-tool-using-agents) applies acceptance criteria and evidence records to agent actions. [Evaluating long-running agents](/wiki/evaluating-long-running-agents) covers repeated trials, interruptions, and environment drift. [Provenance and revision-pinned citations](/wiki/provenance-and-revision-pinned-citations) covers evidence identity and versioning. [Reproducible builds](/wiki/reproducible-builds) and [content-addressed storage](/wiki/content-addressed-storage) provide neighboring mechanisms for rebuilding and identifying software artifacts.    This article gives a cross-domain engineering overview. Project-specific obligations must be derived from the current governing contracts, standards, regulations, risk classification, and organizational policy.