263
Integration in Systems Engineering Context
significantly from that which is desired by the totality of stakeholders. Not
all stakeholders will be happy with the compromises or the outcomes of
the requirements analysis. And fundamentally it is impossible to build a
system that does no harm. The reason for such a strong statement is rooted
in the recognition that when systems are built for commercial purposes they
are meant to compete in a lively and profitable manner. Other companies
lose marketshare and often substantial money. The stakeholders include not
only the developers and the customers and users of the new product or service, but also the competitors who may be affected by loss of sales. All have
a stake in the requirements for the new product or service—with the competition wanting less functionality and lower performance which is completely
at odds with those stakeholders who want greater functionality, greater performance, or a lower cost. Every system has stakeholders who at odds with
the requirements. Acquirers set the domain of the key stakeholders. Military
planners must consider the “competitive” environment for the products and
services they have developed. Adversaries are indeed key stakeholders, but
not in the same way as the developers. Consequently, systems are affected
by the key stakeholders during acquisition and development in a way that
grants them a higher importance and greater influence than those stakeholders—the competitors and adversaries who hold completely opposite
views on the requirements.
Stakeholder importance is a qualitative measure based on the product
of the number of interactions a stakeholder has with other stakeholders,
and the worth of these interactions as determined by the worth activation
function—the measure of performance multiplied by the loss incurred if
the performance deviates from a target value of desired EMMI, then
divided by the expenditure of EMMI to achieve that performance. From the
work of Ku (2007), the importance of a stakeholder is based on the number
of interactions each stakeholder has with all other stakeholders (internal,
external, first-order). The more direct an interaction a stakeholder has with
others within the system, the more likely it is that the stakeholder’s actions
will affect the whole system rather than individual subcomponents of the
system.
Unlike stakeholder importance which is quantifiable in terms of EMMI,
stakeholder influence is a qualitative measure based on the types of relationships the stakeholders have with the system domain (internal, firstorder, or second-order) and the duration of these relationships throughout
the product’s lifecycle. The higher the risk of gain or loss a stakeholder has
with regards to the system domain, the greater the influence that stakeholder
may have over the system. Therefore, internal stakeholders may have greater
influence than first-order stakeholders may have. In turn, first-order stakeholders may have greater influence than second-order stakeholders may. In
addition, the duration of the relationships has a bearing on the stakeholder’s
influence. If an internal stakeholder only interacts with the system during
the concept development phase, but a first-order stakeholder interacts with