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Systems engineering decision-making: Optimizing and/or satisficing?

Not all systems are the same: consequently they need different management approaches. The varied typology of systems is not always universally recognized. One way in which systems can vary is in terms of complexity; and there is increasing awareness about growing complexity in systems across a number of literature domains. Complexity is now an evolving topic in systems engineering (SE). However, traditional SE has tended to address all systems with the same approach, moving from the premise that activities and their interrelationships are linear and measurable. Recently there has been a paradigm shift in the way systems are understood, with the recognition of their nonlinear and emergent properties. Traditionally optimization has been the primary method of decision-making. When dealing with complexity, true optimization is not always possible: therefore satisficing was introduced. Selecting and applying these two very different approaches is proving to be a challenging task for engineering practitioners. This paper explores SE decision-making in dealing with different types of systems with various degrees of complexity and proposes a decision-making methodology which can assist engineering managers with the selection of optimizing versus satisficing in a given situation or problem space.