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Using Decision Analysis to Provide Integrated, Transparent Trade‐off Analysis
Author(s) -
Specking Eric
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
insight
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2156-4868
pISSN - 2156-485X
DOI - 10.1002/inst.12220
Subject(s) - analytics , computer science , documentation , hierarchy , process (computing) , data science , work (physics) , knowledge management , process management , management science , software engineering , engineering , mechanical engineering , economics , market economy , programming language , operating system
Clients often ask systems engineers to communicate the complexities of their studies or to review/understand someone else's study. Exploring, evaluating, and communicating the tradespace is difficult to do, especially when reviewing others’ work, due to the lack of knowledge of the tradespace, number and types of models, the complexities of the analysis, and the adequacy of the documentation. Additionally, it is challenging to identify and demonstrate important trade‐offs found throughout the design decision process. This demonstrates a need to understand the complexities of the analysis, be able to visualize their relationships, and then be able to communicate it to others in a simplified manner that technical and non‐technical stakeholders can understand. This article describes: (1) how system engineering requires descriptive, predictive, and prescriptive analytics in early system design, (2) a framework for an integrated trade‐off analytics approach that incorporates the various analytics categories with model‐based engineering and model‐based system engineering, and (3) a decision analysis tool called the trade‐off analytics hierarchy that transparently identifies and communicates the complexities of an analysis to stakeholders.