Integrating requirements development and decision analysis

This paper describes and demonstrates how decision analysis can be used in the requirements development process of systems engineering. The requirements development process consists of the development of an operational concept, identification of the external systems that interact with the system and the context in which the system operates, an objectives hierarchy for the system´s performance, and the requirements These requirements are divided into requirements categories of input/output, system-wide and technology, trade-off, and test. The focus of this paper is the input/output and trade-off requirements. Decision analysis includes multi-attribute utility analysis as the approach for defining the value model to be used by the decision maker in evaluating the available options. Implicit in this approach is an objectives hierarchy for defining the value space of the decision maker. Also included is the mathematical structure for the trade-off requirements. Throughout this article a system called the Mobile Protected Weapons System (MPWS) is used to describe the development of the system engineering and decision analysis concepts. The MPWS was to be a helicopter-transportable, direct-fire support weapons system for the US Marine Corps (USMC), with an initial operating capability of 1988. The basis of the example in this paper was a real application of decision analysis to the MPWS in 1980, prior to the complete development of the some of the ideas described in this paper