Many times, when software development is commissioned, there will be a point where the company decides that they can accept the product not necessarily ready for deployment since it hasn’t been validated but the developer has met their commitments.
Requirements Fulfilled
They may have demonstrated the system fulfills its requirements on the development environment (remember: validation needs to be done on your system!).
The software is then turned over (released) for eventual deployment.
If the development was done internally, this may coincide with validation as discussed above.
If you’re buying commercial software, this is not applicable.
One of the key inputs to validation, though, comes out of this activity: the release documentation.
The release documentation should address the following topics:
- Modifications Since the Last Release
- Known Issues
- Configuration Management