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According to "The Complete Guide to Software Testing" by Bill Hetzel,
QED Information Sciences, Inc., Wellesley, Massachusetts, 1988, the
following definitions apply:
Verification--Evaluation performed at the end of a phase with the
objective of ensuring that the requirements established during the
previous phase have been met. (More generally, verification refers to the
overall software evaluation activity, including reviewing, inspecting,
testing, checking, and auditing.)
Validation--The process of evaluating software at the end of the
development process to ensure compliance with requirements.
I understand this to mean that verification is performed several times
during the development process. Documentation testing itself, is one part
of the development process, and is therefore best defined as a
verification process. On the other hand, validation is performed at the
end of the development process, and in my mind, may be performed by
either end-users or development team personnel, perhaps both.
