5.4.4 Managing Customer Expectations through an Integrated Approach to Risk Management, Program Performance Measures, and Trade Studies

Abstract

Standard practices in systems engineering do not take full advantage of data collected and organized by those performing risk management, program performance measurement, and trade study management tasks. Adjustments to existing systems engineering practices, presented in this paper, allow integration of these separate tasks in a way that significantly enhances program management's ability to manage customer expectations and reduce the cost of development. This paper presents real‐world examples of extensions to risk assessment practices that allow risks to be rolled‐up to program performance measures in addition to a traditional work breakdown structure. Integration of existing risk abatement planning tasks are explained in sufficient detail to show how key decisions embedded in risk abatement plans are included on the trade study list and evaluated in terms of program performance measures.

9.6.1 On Trade Studies

“…The decision maker has to integrate these inputs across all the stakeholders and possible futures of the system. A limited sample of papers published on this topic include: Buede and Choisser (1992), Buede et al (2002), Daniels et al (2001), Dean and Safford (2001), Osmundson (2000), and Redman and Stratton (2001).…”