Assessment of Changes in Technical Systems and their Effects on Cost and Duration based on Structural Complexity

Large engineering products like naval vessels are very complex systems. As there are long development times, multiple design changes occur frequently because of changes in requirements. This leads to cost and schedule overruns. One reason for these failures may be a lack of understanding the effects of changes in engineering projects due to their complexity. Therefore linkages between requirements, functions and components involved in changes must be analyzed to predict these effects. This paper presents a method to determine the impact of changes on product cost and project delay due to varying levels of complexity and to evaluate change alternatives.