Methodology by Example – 6 Approaches to Verification

This blog is an exciting next step – exciting for me at least! – that builds on what I proposed in The Ideal Verification Timeline. In that we discussed a timeline for a complete collection of verification techniques. We looked at when each technique is best applied during the project development cycle and its relative impact. I received some pretty good feedback from that. Very encouraging. Got me thinking that we’re going in the right direction with this string of ideas.

The ideal timeline did feel like a big step. But despite the positive feedback, to me it fell short of being realistic. It includes all the possibilities and for most development teams all the possibilities aren’t practical.

This post is meant to take us into the practical.

We do it with a collection of example verification flows pulled out of the ideal timeline. Each example is part of a progression that builds up from an exclusively constrained random flow. At each step in the progression, I add one or more techniques and estimate the consequences; consequences are measured in bug rate and confidence. This progression wasn’t originally part of my plan; luckily it sprouted from a comment from a colleague on an earlier post (I take that as proof there’s benefits to constantly pestering colleagues for opinions 🙂 ).

I went with video this time because I felt like it was more appropriate for the visuals. It’s about 7:20 long. As always, happy to have questions or comments. You can find me at: neil_johnson@mentor.com.

-neil