Designing the Design Space: Evaluating Best Practices in Tradespace Exploration, Analysis and Decision-Making 2022-01-0354

Determining the validity of the design space early in the conceptualization of a project can make the difference between project success and failure. Early assessment of technical feasibility, project risk, technical readiness and realistic performance expectations based on models with different levels of fidelity, uncertainty, and technical robustness is a challenging mission critical task for large procurement projects. Tradespace exploration uses model-based engineering analysis, design exploration methods, and multi-objective optimization techniques to enable project stakeholders to make informed decisions and tradeoffs concerning the scope, schedule, budget, performance and risk profile of a project. As the intersection with a number of project stakeholders, tradespace studies can provide a significant impact upon the direction and decision-making in a project. Yet, the act of studying the tradespace is data intensive, subject to variability, uncertainty complexity and ambiguity (VUCA). These properties of the data in the tradespace present challenges in both conducting tradespace studies but also in presenting the results of tradespace studies to a variety of stakeholders. In this work, data collected from the literature concerning tradespace exploration, analysis and decision-making practices is reviewed and analyzed to identify the best practices and common pitfalls experienced by organizations conducting tradespace studies. Using a series of interviews conducted with members of a tradespace study group, the authors then proceed to use these best-practices and common issues to evaluate the tradespace study group to reveal avenues for improvement and areas of excellence within that group. Through this paper, other organizations can perform similar self-assessments to improve their capabilities with respect to tradespace studies.