Verification
Verification asks whether a product was built correctly according to its specified requirements — reviewing designs, checking code against a spec, and running tests that confirm stated behavior. It's distinct from validation, which asks whether those requirements actually solve the user's real problem in the first place.
Verification activities happen throughout development, not just at the end: requirements reviews, design reviews, code reviews, and most functional test execution are all verification — checking the product against what it was supposed to do, as documented.
The limitation of verification alone is that it's only as good as the requirements it's checking against. A system can be perfectly verified — every requirement met, every test passing — and still be the wrong system, if the requirements missed what users actually needed. That's precisely the gap validation exists to close, which is why mature test strategies build in both, not just the more easily-automated verification half.
