TOPIC: Verification and Validation

Hi everyone,

I'm wondering what is the difference between Verificaiton and Validation.

According to many PM courses, Validation is considered as the process when you check if what is done in your project exactly benefits business, in the sense according to which the project is authorized. On the other hand, Verification is considered as the testing process, you verify a deliverable in order to be sure that this deliverable meets the requirements.

So, Verification comes BEFORE Validation. You can make a product which exactly meets the requirements (Verification), but does not benefit the business at all (Validation)

But in PMBOK, there is a process called Verify Scope, where one of the input is Validated Deliverable, which is inturn the result of the process Control Quality. So, according to the PMBOK, Validation comes BEFORE Verification.

I understand that for the PMP Exam, PMBOK is always true. But I would like to know in this case does the PMBOK make sense to you or the definition that I provided at the beginning?

Long Son

Son,

I'd say that this is simply a case of using the word "validation" and meaning slightly different things.

The validated deliverables that are used as an input to Verify Scope are an output from the Perform Quality Control process. Therefore, the "validation" that is performed on these deliverables is to ensure that they are correct and have been created according to our project's quality standards. Now that we know that they are 'valid' we can give them to the customer for acceptance.