How should organizations approach the evaluation of system complexity at the early stages of system design in order to inform decision making? Since system complexity can be understood and approached in several different ways, such evaluation is challenging. In this study, we define the term “system complexity factors” to refer to a range of different aspects of system complexity that may contribute differentially to systems engineering outcomes. Views on the absolute and relative importance of these factors for early–life cycle system evaluation are collected and analyzed using a qualitative questionnaire of International Council on Systems Engineers (INCOSE) members (n = 55). We identified and described the following trends in the data: there is little between‐participant agreement on the relative importance of system complexity factors, even for participants with a shared background and role; participants tend to be internally consistent in their ratings of the relative importance of system complexity factors. Given the lack of alignment on the relative importance of system complexity factors, we argue that successful evaluation of system complexity can be better ensured by explicit determination and discussion of the (possibly implicit) perspective(s) on system complexity that are being taken.

中文翻译：

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分析系统复杂性对系统工程界的重要性

在系统设计的早期阶段，组织应如何进行系统复杂性的评估，以便为决策提供依据？由于可以通过几种不同的方式来理解和处理系统的复杂性，因此这种评估具有挑战性。在本研究中，我们将术语“系统复杂性因素”定义为指系统复杂性的不同方面的范围，这些方面可能对系统工程成果做出不同的贡献。使用国际系统工程师协会（INCOSE）成员的定性问卷，收集并分析了这些因素对早期生命周期系统评估的绝对和相对重要性的观点（n= 55）。我们确定并描述了数据的以下趋势：即使对于具有共同背景和角色的参与者，参与者之间对于系统复杂性因素的相对重要性也几乎没有共识；参与者倾向于对系统复杂性因素的相对重要性进行内部评估。鉴于缺乏关于系统复杂性因素相对重要性的一致性，我们认为，通过明确确定并讨论正在采取的关于系统复杂性的（可能是隐含的）观点，可以更好地确保成功评估系统复杂性。