Success is the objective during product development and good decision-making is the “yellow brick road” that leads to success. Decisions are used by systems engineers and project managers to guide and control events that occur during product development. Mistakes due to an improper definition of decisions made in the front end of the development process can have substantially negative impacts on the total cost of the system and its success with users and bill payers. The purpose of this paper is to define key decisions that can aid project managers and systems engineers during product development.
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