Scenario Based Evaluation

The concept of a scenario has long been utilized in military procurement as a means of evaluating capability in an operational context. With the advent of initiatives such as the USA Department of Defence´s Network-Centric Operations and the UK Ministry of Defence´s Network Enabled Capability, research into the application of service-oriented architectures (SOA) as a means of delivering capability is being undertaken. A promising output of this research is the definition of scenario based evaluation models that can be applied to SOA. This paper examines the application of a military scenario framework to more conventional software evaluation situations by means of case studies. This demonstrates that similar techniques can be used in their construction and thus provides a basis for the application of scenario based evaluation models in future research.