1.3 Typical Application of the Systems Engineering Process system requirements are satisfied. These processes are applied iteratively through- out the development of the system, with ongoing feedback between the differ- ent processes. In more complex applications, there are multiple levels of system decomposition beginning at an enterprise or SoS level. In those cases, variants of this process are applied recursively to each intermediate level of the design down to the level at which the components are purchased or built. The System Specification and Design process includes the following activities to provide a balanced system solution that satisfies the diverse stakeholders' needs: 5 Elicit and analyze stakeholder needs to understand the problem to be solved, the goals the system is intended to support, and the effectiveness measures needed to evaluate how well the system supports the goals Specify system functionality, interfaces, physical and performance charac- teristics , and other quality characteristics required of the system to support the goals and effectiveness measures Synthesize alternative system solutions by partitioning the system design into components that can satisfy the system requirements Perform trade-off analysis to evaluate and select a preferred solution that satisfies system requirements and provides the optimum balance to achieve