Edited by James Braham  Donald G. Reinertsen President,
Reinertsen & Associates Redondo Beach, Calif.  Some people seem
to live in a world without trade-offs, a magical world with no
limits, where if you can dream it you can do it. Sadly,
engineers are not allowed into this magical world. You are
condemned to live in the unforgiving world of trade-offs.
Customers may want a $1,000 car that drives for 30 years on a
single tank of gas. Marketing may smile and assure them one will
be available next month. However, desire alone is insufficient.
If the technology to fill the need does not exist, engineers
must make trade-offs, and the engineer who makes the best ones
wins.  How do you make these trade-offs? Do you rationally trade
off among important objectives such as unit cost, budget,
performance, and schedule with hard-nosed, pragmatic choices?
The sad truth is that development teams waste millions of
dollars every day because they lack even the most rudimentary
decision tools to make such trade-offs. This ar