Everyone can understand the phrase “The END justifies the MEANS”. It expresses that you can do whatever you want and use whatever MEANS as long as you can achieve the END result. In Quality Assurance, specifically in Verification & Validation (or V&V in short), a product/service can only pass Quality Assurance if “The right END must be achieved through the right MEANS”
In other words, under context of QA, it is not just necessary to assert you have arrived at the END result, but you also have to ensure the WAY you achieve it complies with specific standards, rules, and the right ingredients are used, and so forth.
All definitions for Verification/Validation do not have anything wrong, but they just keep listing the objects that would go behind these two verbs, such as some artifacts, without stressing the fact that the artifacts go behind the verb "Verify" are those associated with the method/way/ingredients, whereas the artifacts go behind the verb "Validate" are those associated with the end product that is produced by using the method/way/ingredients!
In other words, these definitions just do not deliver the intended IMPACT for understanding like this: “You VALIDATE the END, and you VERIFY the MEANS” (similar to "Building the right thing" and "Building the thing right" principles).
