Verification checks whether a product complies with specifications and further fixed conditions.
Verification is a quality control process that evaluates whether the product under development complies with regulations, specifications, or conditions imposed at the start of a development phase, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verification_and_Validation.
Verification spans from manual testing to formal methods, from early development to final product evaluation.
Although there is often not a clear divide, you should try to differentiate the following two notions:
- Validation: "Are we trying to make the right thing?", i.e., is the product specified to the user's actual needs?
- Verification: "Have we made what we were trying to make?", i.e., does the product conform to the specifications?
Also see: validation
