Test Science Roadmap Committee

Report on the Test Science Roadmap Test Science Roadmap Committee

Statistical test and analysis methodologies provide many benefits to the DoD Test and Evaluation (T&E) community. These benefits include: Design of Experiments (DOE) that elicit the maximum information from constrained resources. Avenues for maximizing information learned from testing and integrating information across multiple tests. Defensible rationales for test adequacy and quantification of risk as a function of test size. Despite these benefits, statistical test and analysis methods have not been universally or consistently applied within the DoD T&E community. The 1998 National Research Study ?Statistics in Defense, Acquisition and Testing? concluded that, ?major advances can be realized by applying selected industrial principles and practices in restructuring the paradigm for operational testing?? and that ??the current practice of statistics in defense testing design and evaluation does not take full advantage of the benefits available from the use of state-of-the-art statistical methodology.? Dr. J. Michael Gilmore, Director, Operational Test and Evaluation, agreed that there was much to be gained by applying state-of-the-art statistical tools to test and evaluation and has pushed to increase the rigor of operational test and evaluation. The Test Science Roadmap effort chronicled in this report officially began in January 2011 with the development of the Roadmap Committee Charter. The overarching goal of the Test Science Roadmap was to increase the scientific and statistical rigor of test and evaluation. This document summarizes the accomplishments of the past two years.