How can you validate and verify your project requirements while balancing scope, time, and cost?

1 What are validation and verification?

Validation and verification are two related but distinct processes that help you evaluate your project requirements. Validation is the process of checking whether your requirements meet the needs and expectations of your stakeholders, customers, and users. Verification is the process of checking whether your requirements are consistent, complete, coherent, and testable. Both processes are essential for ensuring that your requirements are aligned with your project scope, objectives, and quality standards.

2 Why are validation and verification important?

Validation and verification are important for several reasons. First, they help you avoid costly rework, errors, and defects that can arise from poorly defined or misunderstood requirements. Second, they help you increase stakeholder satisfaction and trust by demonstrating that you understand their problems and solutions. Third, they help you manage scope creep and change requests by establishing a clear and agreed-upon baseline for your requirements. Fourth, they help you deliver value and benefits to your customers and users by ensuring that your requirements are relevant, usable, and desirable.

3 How to perform validation and verification?

Validation and verification of project requirements can be done through a variety of methods and techniques, such as reviews, prototypes, and tests. A review is a formal or informal inspection of requirements by yourself, peers, stakeholders, or experts. This is useful for identifying errors, gaps, ambiguities, or conflicts and suggesting improvements or corrections. A prototype is a mock-up or simulation of the product or service that can help validate requirements by getting feedback from customers or users and verifying them against the prototype. Tests are systematic evaluations of requirements against predefined criteria or scenarios to check if they meet quality, performance, functionality, or usability standards. All these methods can be used at any stage of the project depending on needs and resources.