Methodological tools and procedures for experimentation in C2 system development - Concept development and experimentation in theory and practice

This report is the concluding documentation of the FOI-project Evolva which has been carried out between 2003 and 2005 with an objective to produce long-term knowledge about development and evaluation methodology serving to improve the command and control system of the armed forces, considering operational and technical as well as economical requirements. The project has had an inter-disciplinary constitution and the work has focused on developing a domain relevant "practice" based on the hypothetical-deductive approach to scientific investigation. The two major goals of the project have been to generate a body of research and to create an education package on research methods for officers. Important areas of work includes: 1) modeling as an approach to define experimental settings based on vaguely defined problems; 2) efficient data-collection techniques by exploiting network technologies; 3) alternatives to "formalized laboratory experiments" and "field exercises" as test environments; 4) alternatives to the written reports to transfer results to clients. The report is intended to be a position paper describing our approach to experimentation in order to facilitate future cooperation on this issue. The report describes our theoretical perspective. The practical applications of these theoretical principles are illustrated by a number of cases.