Year: 2023-2024

Spring Semester

Advanced Software
Engineering

Verification &
Validation
 Lecture Outline
• Verification and validation planning

• Software inspections

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 Verification vs validation
• Verification: 'No error'
"Are we building the product right”.
• The software should conform to its
specification.
• Validation:
"Are we building the right product”.
• The software should do what the user really
requires.
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 The V & V process
• Is a whole life-cycle process - V & V must be
applied at each stage in the software process.

• Has two principal objectives

– The discovery of defects in a system;
– The assessment of whether or not the system is
useful and useable in an operational situation.

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 V&V goals
• Verification and validation should establish
confidence that the software is fit for purpose.
• This does NOT mean completely free of
defects.
• Rather, it must be good enough for its
intended use and the type of use will
determine the degree of confidence that is
needed.

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 Static and dynamic verification

• Software inspections. Concerned with analysis of

the static system representation to discover problems
(static verification)
– May be supplement by tool-based document and code analysis
• Software testing. Concerned with exercising and
observing product behaviour (dynamic verification)
– The system is executed with test data and its operational
behaviour is observed

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 Static and dynamic V&V

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 Program testing
• Can reveal the presence of errors NOT their
absence.
• The only validation technique for non-
functional requirements as the software has
to be executed to see how it behaves.
• Should be used in conjunction with static
verification to provide full V&V coverage.

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 Types of testing
• Defect testing
– Tests designed to discover system defects.
– A successful defect test is one which reveals the presence of defects in
a system.
– Covered in Chapter 23
• Validation testing
– Intended to show that the software meets its requirements.
– A successful test is one that shows that a requirements has been
properly implemented.

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 Testing and debugging
• Defect testing and debugging are distinct
processes.

• Verification and validation is concerned with establishing the

existence of defects in a program.

• Debugging is concerned with locating and

repairing these errors.

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 The debugging process

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 V & V planning
• Careful planning is required to get the most
out of testing and inspection processes.

• Planning should start early in the

development process.

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 The V-model of development

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 The structure of a software test plan

• The testing process.

• Requirements traceability.
• Tested items.
• Testing schedule.
• Test recording procedures.
• Hardware and software requirements.
• Constraints.

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 The software test plan
The testing process
A description of the major phases of the testing process. These might be
as described earlier in this chapter.

Requirements traceability
Users are most interested in the system meeting its requirements and
testing should be planned so that all requirements are individually tested.

Tested items
The products of the software process that are to be tested should be
specified.

Testing schedule
An overall testing schedule and resource allocation for this schedule.
This, obviously, is linked to the more general project development
schedule.

Test recording procedures

It is not enough simply to run tests. The results of the tests must be
systematically recorded. It must be possible to audit the testing process
to check that it been carried out correctly.

Hardware and software requirements

This section should set out software tools required and estimated
hardware utilisation.

Constraints
Constraints affecting the testing process such as staff shortages should
be anticipated in this section.

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 Software inspections
• These involve people examining the source representation
with the aim of discovering defects.

• Inspections not require execution of a system so may be used

before implementation.

• They may be applied to any representation of the system

(requirements, design, configuration data, test data, etc.).

• They have been shown to be an effective technique for

discovering program errors.

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 Inspections and testing
• Inspections and testing are complementary and not opposing
verification techniques.

• Both should be used during the V & V process.

• Inspections can check conformance with a specification but

not conformance with the customer’s real requirements.

• Inspections cannot check non-functional characteristics such

as performance, usability, etc.

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 Inspection pre-conditions
• A precise specification must be available.
• Team members must be familiar with the
organisation standards.
• Syntactically correct code or other system representations
must be available.
• An error checklist should be prepared.
• Management must accept that inspection will
increase costs early in the software process.
• Management should not use inspections for staff
appraisal ie finding out who makes mistakes.

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 The inspection process

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 Inspection procedure
• System overview presented to inspection
team.
• Code and associated documents are
distributed to inspection team in advance.
• Inspection takes place and discovered errors
are noted.
• Modifications are made to repair discovered
errors.
• Re-inspection may or may not be required.
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 Inspection roles

Author or owner The programmer or designer responsible for

producing the program or document. Responsible
for fixing defects discovered during the inspection
process.
Inspector Finds errors, omissions and inconsistencies in
programs and documents. May also identify
broader issues that are outside the scope of the
inspection team.
Reader Presents the code or document at an inspection
meeting.
Scribe Records the results of the inspection meeting.
Chairman or moderator Manages the process and facilitates the inspection.
Reports process results to the Chief moderator.
Chief moderator Responsible for inspection process improvements,
checklist updating, standards development etc.

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 Inspection checks 1
Data faults Are all program variables initialised before their values are
used?
Have all constants been named?
Should the upper bound of arrays be equal to the size of the
array or Size -1?
If character strings are used, is a de limiter explicitly
assigned?
Is there any possibility of buffer overflow?
Control faults For each conditional statement, is the condition correct?
Is each loop certain to terminate?
Are compound statements correctly bracketed?
In case statements, are all possible cases accounted for?
If a break is required after each case in case statements, has
it been included?
Input/output faults Are all input variables used?
Are all output variables assigned a value before they are
output?
Can unexpected inputs cause corruption?

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 Inspection checks 2

Interface faults Do all function and method calls have the correct number
of parameters?
Do formal and actual parameter types match?
Are the parameters in the right order?
If components access shared memory, do they have the
same model of the shared memory structure?
Storage If a linked structure is modified, have all links been
management faults correctly reassigned?
If dynamic storage is used, has space been allocated
correctly?
Is space explicitly de-allocated after it is no longer
required?
Exception Have all possible error conditions been taken into account?
management faults

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 Inspection rate
• 500 statements/hour during overview.
• 125 source statement/hour during individual
preparation.
• 90-125 statements/hour can be inspected.
• Inspection is therefore an expensive process.
• Inspecting 500 lines costs about 40 man/hours
effort - about £2800 at UK rates.

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