Design Alternative Traceability Pattern
PatternID: 100.002
Name: Design Alternative Traceability Pattern
Category: Business Scenario
Creation Date: March 25, 2018
Creators: Wesley Coelho and . . . (additional contributors to be specified here)
Description: When designing a complex product such as an aircraft it's necessary to evaluate several design alternatives for a given component and consider the corresponding tradeoffs. The selected design alternative and associated analysis is reflected and documented as part of the component design. However, there is a need to track the information relevant to the design alternatives that were not selected so that the rationale can be reviewed at a later date. Finding the relevant documents and information for alternative designs that were not selected is often difficult or impossible and may lead to wasted time re-considering discarded designs because the rationale is no longer available.
Stakeholder Roles:
System Architect - Performs the design tradeoff analysis and selects a design.
System Engineer - Takes as input the design from the architect and designs the sub-components.
Chief Engineer - Typically this stakeholder has the periodic need to re-review the rationale for selected designs and design alternatives.
Systems of Record: Information related to design alternatives is stored in various databases, documents such as Word, Powerpoint, spreadsheets, requirements tracking systems such as IBM DOORS, and modelling tools such as Mathworks Simulink, NoMagic, Sparx EA. The selected design is typically tracked in a PLM system such as Enovia or Windchill.
Key Artifacts: Design rationale documentation
Example: When designing an aircraft the Aircraft Architect evaluates several alternatives and determines that the engines should be placed below the wings. At a later stage while a System Engineer is designing the height of the landing gear it is determined that the engines will be too close to the ground. The Chief Engineer then wants to understand why the design alternative of placing the engines higher up on the back of the plane was not selected. This requires traceability from the PLM system to a set of documents and databases that were used in the design tradeoff analysis.
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