Software Engineering

14.2.3 
Establish trade-study procedures
Trade studies are controlled experiments and involve adhering to a consistent set 
of procedures for each trial. The procedures must permit a consistent application 
of experimental conditions and stimuli for each alternative being evaluated. The 
trade-study procedures must be prepared so that they address the following stages 
of trade-study progression:
1. 
Environment setup
—the preparation of the experiment for each candidate 
alternative.
2. 
Initialization
—the loading of scenario data sets and preparation of data collec-
tion mechanisms to capture and record the experimental data.
3. 
Execution
—the carrying out of actions, such as operator inputs during the trial 
scenario.
4. 
Termination
—the actions necessary to end the trial and place the environmental 
and data collection mechanisms into an inactive state.
5. 
Analysis
—the consistent approach to examining the captured data sets to 
identify the level of accomplishment achieved by each candidate alternative 
evaluated.