Quantifying and Tracking Flexibility of System Elements to Support (Re)Design Decision‐Making

ABSTRACT Evolving objectives and requirements, risk management processes, and external disruptions frequently drive change in engineered systems. Due to these pressures, system architects must anticipate and manage change throughout a system's lifecycle. Yet, managing change is challenging due to the risk of change propagation. Many existing change propagation analysis (CPA) methods provide insight into where change may travel but provide limited understanding of why change propagates. CPA methods also help identify which design elements should be “flexible,” yet the meaning of flexibility at the element‐level is rarely clarified. We address this gap by defining flexibility of system elements and quantitatively measuring them as local, context‐dependent properties. Element flexibility provides designers with insight into the feasibility of modifying system elements, the impact of modifications on the ability to make future changes, and pathways for restoring feasibility after an infeasible modification is made. A high‐powered rocket design case is introduced and leveraged to illustrate how tracking element flexibility could address these areas of inquiry in practice. The ability to quantify element flexibility also provides a foundation for future changeability research, serving as a structured approach for determining the specific modifications that propagate change.