and obtaining positive feedback from them, can further increase the certainty that the SRS is correctly formulated. On the other hand, the software, as a final and running product (not its artifacts and documents, including the source code) must be validated dynamically with the stakeholders by executing the software and having them to try it. Some might argue that, for SRS, the input is the words of stakeholders and, therefore, SRS validation is the same as SRS verification. Thinking this way is not advisable as it only causes more confusion. It is better to think of verification as a process involving a formal and technical input document. Software quality assurance Software testing may be considered a part of a software quality assurance (SQA) process. In SQA, software process specialists and auditors are concerned with the software development process rather than just the artifacts such as documentation, code and systems. They examine and change the software engineering process itself to reduce the number of faults that end up in the delivered software: the so-called defect rate. What constitutes an acceptable defect rate depends on the nature of the software; a flight simulator video game would have much higher defect tolerance than software for an actual airplane. Although there are close links with SQA, testing departments often exist independently, and there may be no SQA function in some companies. Software testing is an activity to investigate software under test in order to provide quality-related information to stakeholders. By contrast, QA (quality assurance) is the implementation of policies and procedures intended to prevent defects from reaching customers. See also References Further reading External links "Software that makes Software better" Economist.com Software engineering terminology