ABSTRACT
Space projects span a wide variety of efforts, ranging from systems-of-systems to fast, complex missions for the Department of Defense (DoD), to inexpensive sounding rockets, to highly complex, long-duration, deep-space missions. The application of systems engineering standards and practices must strike a balance between ensuring a consistent process and supporting the need for project flexibility and creativity. Systems engineering is the responsibility of all engineers, scientists, and managers working on a technical development project since each shares part of the overall systems engineering effort. This chapter outlines the roles and responsibilities of key project staff that form the systems engineering team. System margins are an essential risk management tool. Two categories of margin are considered, resource margin and design margin. The appropriate level of margin varies with each system resource budget parameter. The systems engineering team is responsible for establishing project-specific system-level technical performance metrics and design guidelines that will be applied across the project.
