I'm working as a programmer in a load cell manufacturing company.We develop our own software for load cell manufacturing and testing purposes.Quality Assurance Department of our company has requested to perform periodical verification and validation tests (once a year) for our released software which has been already tested. (They are considering software as a equipment such as a multi-meters which requires periodical verification.)My opinion is there is no point of testing a released software from time to time.So I'm here to find answers for the following questions from some experts:Is it a common practice to perform validation or verification tests time to time for industrial software which is already tested and released?Whether it is a common practice or not, are there any supporting reasons to do so?
Are periodic validation or verification tests required after the software is released?
testing;validation;verification
It does not seem to make much sense to run the exactly same set of tests against the exactly same, unchanged piece of software once a year, as long as the software runs on a reliable, unchanged hardware, in an unchanged OS environment, and the program behaves deterministically in context of the tests. However, if your company is not just testing the software, but the system as a whole (including hardware, operating system, sensors, production controllers etc.), or if the tests got improved in between, it can make sense. And the fact your software was once tested and released does not make it bug-free, it just proves it contains only undetected bugs so far.In your case it sounds your QA department just wants the tests to be repeated though nothing has changed only for formal reasons. Well, if they insist, make sure you have all your tests automated, run the test suite once a year, send them the test protocol and make sure you bill them for this.