case study
A case study is a research technique where you identify key factors that may affect the outcome of an activity and then document the activity: its inputs, constraints, resources, and outputs. Case studies usually look at a typical project, rather than trying to capture information about all possible cases; these can be thought of a "research in the typical". Formal experiments, case studies and surveys are three key components of empirical investigation in software engineering. [Fenton&Pfleeger 1996]
The term case study is also often used in an engineering sense of the word. Testing a given technique or tool on a representative case against a predefined list of criteria and reporting about the lessons learned.