Engineering Change Management (ECM) Methods: Classification According to Their Dependency Models

Engineering Change Management methods lead to assess impact of engineering changes and evaluate their propagation effects. In this paper, we propose a novel classification of Engineering Change Management methods according to their dependency model: (i) theoretical dependency model and (ii) a posteriori dependency model. A dependency model is needed to assess the change effect on one parameter after changing the value of another one. Three reference methods are presented here in details to explain the differences between these two types of dependency models and their usability according to designer decisions. The comparison shows that a theoretical model is generally a deterministic model that request a lot of knowledge and expertise in different areas. Besides an a posteriori model is based on probabilistic data and uses simple techniques and tools.