How can you align system trade-offs with project goals?

Define: Goals, constraints, and potential trade-offs. Evaluate: Impact of trade-offs on goals. Prioritize: Choose solutions balancing goals and constraints. Communicate: Decisions and rationale to stakeholders. Iterate: Monitor progress and adjust as needed.

Nailing down a systems engineering problem? Good luck. It's like a shape-shifter, courtesy of ever-fluctuating office politics. Forget the textbook perfection. Embrace the chaos and get ready to pivot. Real-world problem-solving isn’t a straight line, it's a roller coaster. Strap in.

QFD is a useful tool; however, I tend to trat a trade-off more like an optimization problem. Clearly define the desired objective, establish the constraints and establish the set of options to be considered. Next, define your tie breaker rules if it is not possible to show one solution is clearly better than the other. If no solution satistifies the objective without violating the constraints, pick the best solution that does satisfy the constraints. In case of a tie, apply your tie breaker rules.

- Clearly outline short-term and long-term objectives. - Recognize where decisions might affect goals (e.g., cost vs. performance). - Rank objectives by importance to the project. - Analyze how system choices impact each goal's achievement. - Solutions that balance trade-offs while aligning with key goals. - Regularly review and adjust decisions as goals or systems evolve. - Ensure stakeholders understand trade-offs and decisions made.

Well defined and understood problem statement is half solution ..require quality time doing QFD is good tool to link fuzzy requirements vs Engineering /product functional /performance targets, manage conflicting requirements as against goal ..helps prioritize criteria , flowing down requirements etc..

Next, generate and compare different solutions. In my projects, we often weighed alternatives like different energy-efficient technologies, considering factors like cost, feasibility, and impact.

Rapid Prototyping is an additional tool that should be used in this step; nothing beats customer feedback in gathering data for quantitative analysis. Hands-on customer testing also allows for feedback opportunities that can amplify brain-strorming exercises Finally, prototyping also allows for low cost A/B testing for functional decomposition. Where prototyping is not feasible, customer interviews with mockups can be substituted. Note, this does not replace the rigor of Project Management, but adds additional information that amplifies the effectiveness of performance, cost, risk, and feasibility analysis.

Choosing the 'best' systems engineering alternative is a myth. It's more about dodging bullets than picking flowers. And stakeholder preferences? A loud-voice contest. Here’s the truth: it's less about making the ideal choice and more about making your choice look ideal. Welcome to the art of compromise.

For almost a decade, I used the multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) for space related trade-off decision making. My preferred method is the weighted linear combination (a.k.a. weighted sum model). It allows me to synthesize all the most relevant figures of merit and their importance. Also, it allows me to do a sensitivity analysis, to understand whether I am over/under-estimating the importance of certain factors in the final scores.

Assess the trade-offs of each alternative. For instance, choosing a less costly solution might mean lower energy efficiency. The goal is to find a balance that aligns with project objectives.

Beware Conway's Law: "Organizations that design systems (or processes) are constrained to produce designs (or processes) that are copies of the organization's communication structures." The implication here is that evaluation of trade-offs and best alternative selection will only be as effective as the collective inputs. An intriguing example of this was presented in Cixin Liu's Three Body Problem through the story of a two-dimensional society living on a sheet of paper, where equally spaced holes exist and the society concludes all future holes will be equally spaced. This example suggests that the laws of physics (or in our case the product decision) can be fundamentally flawed by the limitations of the knowledge available.

It would be very helpful to know the stakeholders' background and interests very well before communicating any results. In this case, we could start from the most familiar terms and rationales delivered to the right persons. Remember that some people do not share the same level of understadings and perspectives as the others. Sometimes, people disagree with our results simply because we fail to make them fully understand what we meant.

Once a decision is made, communicate it effectively to all stakeholders and document the rationale. This transparency helps in maintaining alignment with the project goals and facilitates future reference.

I find this probably the most difficult part of the overall activity. The communication of the results is intimately linked to the stakeholders. I remember having exhaustive presentation of 300+ slides, representing the detailed process and results. However, this exhaustive documentation is not always useful to all the stakeholders. On the basis of my experience, it is always necessary to have a chunky documentation from which extracts can be produced. This allows to be consistent with the "source" material and, at the same time, to derive smaller subsets that are more tailored to a certain subset of stakeholders. With minor tweaks, this extracts are surely more "digestible" in terms of content, level of details and length.

Maintaining a consistent approach to analysing the sensitivity of critical system requirements, assumptions, and constraints throughout the project's life cycle improves the decision quality and feasibility assessments. These insights play a pivotal role in refining the technical scope, driving innovation, and strategically prioritising risk management to maximise the delivered value.

Regularly monitor the implemented solution's performance. In my experience, this often leads to insights requiring adjustments to the initial trade-offs, ensuring the project remains on track with its goals.

Improve your trade-off skills, they say. As if it's a high score to beat. In the real world, it’s less about skill, and more about tightrope walking over a sea of conflicting interests. The trick isn't just making trade-offs; it’s in packaging them so well that everyone thinks they won the lottery.

Continuously learn from each project to enhance your ability to make effective trade-offs. Reflecting on past decisions and outcomes is a key part of this learning process.