About The Three Phases of Software Validation Process

As a test engineer we know that the development team develops the software as per the software requirement specification (SRS),  customer requirement specification (CRS), Functional specification, and later the QA team verifies the development at different stages of testing at various testing servers/environment

With the approach of Software development life cycle (SDLC) the development team finishes off their works by handling the developed and verified by the operations team. Now ops team comes into the action by takes care while deploying it to Prod(Production server) and make it ready for the end user to uses it.

The real challenge faced by the Operations team to make it functional on the production server, because the development and the verification done on the simulated servers which are quietly closed to the production environment 

This is the time where the validation process comes into the action. After the verification the software successful handover to the production team and they would carry out the multiple activities before accepting it to be deployed to the live environment, to prove that the all requirements are fulfilling, which is nothing but known as validation process. 

Phases of Validation Process

Generally, the validation process refers to the complete cycle of any product start from development end with use and maintenance.
Generally the 5 phase of the validation process followed by the many industries like pharmaceuticals, medical, software, manufacturing etc. Here the end user validates the product, equipment, machinery before buying it.

The 3’Q approach of software validation process -IQ-OQ-PQ

Ideally Installation Qualification, Operational Qualifications and Performance Qualifications are the sequential process, which requires being executed in order. Because unless the installation is done, the functionality of the product could not be validated and unless the functionality is validated, no point to judge the performance of the software. 

Installation Qualification(IQ): To verify the successful installation of the software on the desired environment and also its documentation. 

Operational Qualification (OQ): To verify all operational specification of the software should work accordingly in the selected environment. All the business requirements should be satisfied on selected server/environment

Performance Qualification (PQ): To verify the performance of the software towards the specifications as its use day by day. Software should not crush on peak load, software should handle the live load successfully and should respond in time to meet the expectations.