Catalog
concept#QA#Reliability#Architecture#Observability

System Verification

A verification concept ensuring the whole system meets specified requirements at system and interface levels.

System verification ensures that a whole system correctly and completely meets its specified requirements.
Established
Medium

Classification

  • Medium
  • Technical
  • Architectural
  • Intermediate

Technical context

Continuous Integration / Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) pipelinesTest automation frameworks (e.g. Selenium, pytest)Observability stacks (logs, traces, metrics)

Principles & goals

Verification checks conformity to requirements, not fitness for purpose.System level first: interfaces and integration are decisive.Traceable artifacts and measurements are mandatory.
Build
Enterprise, Domain, Team

Use cases & scenarios

Compromises

  • Overreliance on tests can mask specification deficiencies.
  • Incomplete test cases lead to false sense of security.
  • Time pressure may lead to inadequate integration and undiscovered interface faults.
  • Plan verification tests early during specification phase
  • Automate repeatable system verifications
  • Ensure traceability between requirements and tests

I/O & resources

  • System requirements and acceptance criteria
  • Integration and interface documentation
  • Test environment and test data
  • Test logs and acceptance reports
  • Detected defects and remediation plans
  • Release approval status

Description

System verification ensures that a whole system correctly and completely meets its specified requirements. It covers integration testing, acceptance checks and system-level evidence to expose defects, interface issues and requirement gaps. It complements validation, which asks whether the right system was built.

✔

  • Early detection of integration problems reduces operational costs.
  • Increases system reliability through targeted system tests.
  • Improves evidenceability toward stakeholders and auditors.

✖

  • Verification proves correctness against specification, not fitness for purpose.
  • Complex test environments may require high initial effort.
  • Not all fault classes (e.g. specification errors) are detected by verification alone.

  • System-level defect density

    Number of defects found per tested system functionality.

  • Coverage of integration test scenarios

    Percentage of defined integration scenarios that were executed.

  • Mean Time To Detect (MTTD) integration faults

    Average time to detect integration faults after build deployment.

Automotive E/E system acceptance

Verification of complete electrical/electronic system against safety and functional requirements.

Flight control software integration test

System tests with hardware-in-the-loop to demonstrate correct flight control behavior.

Cloud platform release validation

End-to-end verification of APIs, authentication and observability before go-live.

1

Define system requirements and acceptance criteria

2

Set up a reproducible integration and test environment

3

Develop and automate system-wide test scenarios

4

Measure, evaluate and track deviations until release

⚠️ Technical debt & bottlenecks

  • Missing automation for critical system tests
  • Outdated test environments that are not reproducible
  • No traceability between requirements and test cases
Insufficient test environmentUnclear requirementsLimited observability
  • Treat verification as a substitute for unclear requirements
  • Perform all checks manually when automation is feasible
  • Not qualifying or tracking verification results
  • Confusing verification with validation
  • Incomplete interface documentation leads to incorrect tests
  • Test data not representative of production load
System and integration test designKnowledge of interface specificationsExperience with test automation and CI
Safety and compliance requirementsInterface diversity and system integrationOperational availability and reliability
  • • Confidentiality and access restrictions to production data
  • • Hardware availability for integration tests
  • • Time constraints before release windows