In agile development, both verification and validation happen as close to simultaneously as possible. Largely, this is due to the necessity to keep refining and updating the user stories, requiring small V&V loops for continuous feedback.
Automation is the addition of technology that performs tasks with reduced human assistance to processes that facilitate feedback loops between operations and development teams so that iterative updates can be deployed faster to applications in production. Instead of requiring humans to manually check code into a repository, run tests throughout the development process, and deploy code to production, practitioners streamline this process by automating each step - empowering the support multiple projects and pipelines in a cost-effective way.