Trade-off Analytics

Chapter 7Identifying Objectives and Value Measures

Gregory S. Parnell

Department of Industrial Engineering, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, AR, USA

William D. Miller

Innovative Decisions, Inc., Vienna, VA, USA; School of Systems and Enterprises, Stevens Institute of Technology, Hoboken, NJ, USA

* This chapter draws on material from Chapters 3 and 7 of Parnell, G. S., Bresnick, T. A., Tani, S.N., and Johnson, E. R., Handbook of Decision Analysis, Wiley Operations Research/Management Science Handbook Series, Wiley & Sons, 2013.

 

If you don't know where you are going, any road will get you there.

(Lewis Carroll)

7.1 Introduction

The decision opportunity and our values determine the decision objectives. The objectives define the goals that we are trying to achieve. In systems engineering, the objective space includes business/mission objectives, stakeholder objectives, and system objectives. Business/mission objectives are derived from organizational and customer needs. Stakeholder objectives include the goals of other important stakeholders in the system life cycle. Finally, system objectives include the technical objectives necessary for the system to meet business/mission and stakeholder objectives throughout the system life cycle. The systems engineering objectives space spans the life cycle of the system's products and services in both commercial and government enterprises including the business/mission need, concept, requirements, architecture, design, integration, ...