Validating Requirements

Validation checks written requirements against reality before development commits to them — through documentation review, a prototype stakeholders can react to, a live demo, or other techniques — confirming they're complete, accurate, and still aligned with the original goals, objectives, and value proposition established back in Needs Assessment. This is a different check than evaluation (Domain V), which happens after the solution is actually built.

Requirements can drift out of alignment even while being individually well-written — a specification can be accurate and measurable and still have quietly stopped serving the original business problem if nobody checked it against that original intent.

Study focus: a scenario where a requirement passes every detail check but a stakeholder says "this isn't actually what we need anymore" is testing the alignment half of validation, not just the completeness-and-accuracy half.