Users of software product can be involved in software testing process as well. The idea of users may be enlarged to comprise non-human users of software products, for example, other software and hardware environments that the software in question interplays with.
Such enlarged user concept is extremely important to embedded systems or miscellaneous systems with the spacious software elements.
Commonly, the users’ opinions and focuses, their usage scenarios, progression, templates and the whole operational environment require to be captured in and used in software testing to assure sufficient execution and reliability for the software.
This is usually used for usage-based statistical testing, where active user participator is indispensable in model construction.
It happens so that the users may even serve informally as software testers, for example in usability testing.
For several kinds of software systems independent verification and validation model is widely used, where software systems are independently tested using different methods by third-party participators.
This model has obtained popularity for different kinds of high-assurance software systems, where high reliability, integrity are needed, resulting in the so-called certification model.
One more reason of popularity of independent verification and validation is the growing use and focus on software development using Commercial-Off-The Shelf elements and Component-Based Software Engineering.
In this case independent software testing and certification of software elements or reusable areas are main points to the possible choice, use, and adoption of software parts or subsystems.