Design Considerations

Design considerations are areas that may affect the requirements, design, or operational concept of a system and should be part of the systems engineering process throughout the acquisition life cycle. Some design considerations are concepts that assist systems engineering trade-offs and ought to be accommodated or applied to each system/program/project. Others are constraints, boundaries, or limitations, with values that can sometimes be tailored or negotiated, but which in general represent fairly immovable parts of the trade space. Many design considerations are mandated by laws, regulations, or treaties, while others are mandated by the domain or Service / Component; these mandates should be incorporated during the Requirements Analysis Process to achieve balance across all of the system requirements.

Additional information on design considerations can be found in DAG Chapter 4 section 4.3.18 [https://acc.dau.mil/dag4.3.18].

The design considerations listed below should be assessed for applicability to the system at hand.  This list is not all inclusive and does not include any additional design considerations levied by the Service, Center, platform, or domain. Not all design considerations are equally important or critical to a given program, but all should be examined for relevancy. This topic area contains information on design considerations.”