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Home > Systems Engineering > thresholds/objectives - meaning and use
 
   
 

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Title - thresholds/objectives - meaning and use

Question -

Is it true that a threshold should always be defined and objectives are nice to haves? In other words, are thresholds always required and objectives optional for necessary situations?

Scenario - I am currently evaluating requirements provided to the government by an OEM. For most of the requirements, an objective has been indicated but no threshold accompanies them.

Posted - 4/20/2016 10:53:00 AM

Subject Area - Systems Engineering

  
 

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There should always be threshold in association with the user’s performance requirements.  Objectives are more than “nice to haves.” While minimum performance levels are stated as thresholds, the contractor has the trade space (and encouraged) to consider any stated objective values if the government agrees that the financial investment is justified after weighing the increase in any performance requirement against any additional costs.  The material developer stays in close coordination with the user for any performance change.  

If a performance requirement is stated as an objective without a threshold, then the objective becomes the defacto threshold that the contractor must meet.  In this case, it sounds like the OEM might have achieved an objective performance value that the government must retain for various reasons (e.g. the subsystem functions have been previously allocated and any performance change would have a consequential ripple affect across the entire system if it were lowered). Or, the threshold performance value was substandard and did not meet its intended performance requirements.  In both cases, the objective should be restated as a threshold or annotated as an objective value “met” in the applicable documentation for configuration management purposes.  Otherwise, if the end item were to be re-procured without an audit trail, it may just only meet the original threshold value which could be disastrous at the system level. I highly recommend that you conduct some forensics to better understand the "how" and the "why" the stated objective became the performance requirement and be armed to make a more "objective" (vs subjective) decision.  Thanks for your question! :)
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