Verification and Validation Testers often make the mistake of not keeping their eye on the end goal. They narrow their focus to the immediate phase of software development and lose sight of the bigger picture. Verification tasks are designed to ensure that the product is internally consistent. They ensure that the product meets the the specification, the specification meets the requirements . . .and so on. The majority of testing tasks are verification – with the final product being checked against some kind of reference to ensure the output is as expected. For example, test plans are normally written from the requirements documents and from the specification. This verifies that the software delivers the requirements as laid out in the technical and requirement specifications. It does not however address the ‘correctness’ of those requirements!