Verification and validation in industry - a qualitative survey on the state of practice

Verification and validation activities take a substantial share of project budgets and need improvements. This is an accepted truth, but the current practices are seldom assessed and analyzed. In this paper we present a qualitative survey of the verification and validation processes at 11 Swedish companies. The purpose was to exchange experience between the companies and to lay out a foundation for further research on the topic. The survey is conducted through workshop and interview sessions, loosely guided by a questionnaire scheme. It is concluded from the survey that there are substantial differences between small and large companies. In large companies, the documented process is emphasized while in small companies, single key, persons have a dominating impact on the procedures. Large companies use commercial tools while small companies make in-house tools or use shareware. Common to all the surveyed companies is that verification and validation is considered important, and thus having rather high status. Information exchange between companies during the survey was considered to be very valuable to the involved subjects.