Verification plan review – First Challenge

Review of verification plans can be very challenging process. First challenge is presence of the verification plan. If present, matching it with the latest status. Verification plans are created initially in many cases but they are not kept up-to-date.

Three possible scenarios good, bad and ugly based on status of verification plan are captured below.

• Verification plans itself does not exist – Yes this can happen in certain cases. Verification has just evolved. This is ugly
• Verification plans were created initially but not updated. Initial verification plans were never updated and current state of execution is far different from what is present in the plans. But it’s agreed that plans are not up to-date. This is good
• Verification plans are present and unclear update status. Initial verification plans were updated some times but thought to be completely updated. Yet they cannot correlate 1:1 to tests and regression results. This is bad

The ugly is just plain ugly. It’s raw and hence its clean to fix.

The good is good because it was thought out initially and its known state that its not updated.

The bad is really bad because it appears to be kept up to date on books but useless. In the case of bad, it’s really bad because the problem is not acknowledged. Problem unacknowledged is biggest hurdle in fixing it because it’s assumed that there is no problem when there is a problem.

Successful verification plans are:

• Put in place as the first step in the functional verification project
• Religiously updated for holes and new items found during the course of execution
• Most importantly verification plan should be able to stitch the plan with the tests developed and all test variants being run in regression phase with their status. This traceability is the key

Before the effective verification plan reviews can start, a traceable verification plan with the latest regression status matching to it needs to be put in place.