System Architecture Principle 6: System design drives life cycle costs

Tagline: System design drives life cycle costs (Blanchard2011) (Crawley2010).

Descriptive version: The systems architecture, and hence the work of the architect, has the largest impact on system life cycle costs.

Prescriptive version: The work of the system architect can drive significant changes in the excepted life cycle costs of the end product.  It is important for the architect to understand the life cycle costs constraints (based on perceived value of the acquiring organization and the desired financial margins of the supplying organization) and to make sure the system architecture supports fits within the targets.

Discussion: The principle is support by the notion that highest management leverage is at the very beginning of the project, when the least amount of money has been committed to the project.  That is, the very first steps, deciding on the system architecture, is the biggest opportunity to steer a project to a desired life cycle costs.

Citations
B. S. Blanchard and W. J. Fabrycky. Systems Engineering and Analysis. Prentice Hall, 2011.

E. Crawley. Esd.34 lecture 1, September 2010.