Typical guidelines for determining when to require a formal evaluation process include the following:

· A decision is directly related to issues that are medium-to-high-impact risk.

· A decision is related to changing work products under configuration management.

· A decision would cause schedule delays over a certain percentage or amount of time.

· A decision affects the ability of the project to achieve its objectives.

· The costs of the formal evaluation process are reasonable when compared to the decision’s impact.

· A legal obligation exists during a solicitation.

· When competing quality attribute requirements would result in significantly different alternative architectures.

Examples of activities for which you may use a formal evaluation process include the following:

· Making decisions involving the procurement of material when 20 percent of the material parts constitute 80 percent of the total material costs

· Making design-implementation decisions when technical performance failure can cause a catastrophic failure (e.g., safety-of-flight item)

· Making decisions with the potential to significantly reduce design risk, engineering changes, cycle time, response time, and production costs (e.g., to use lithography models to assess form and fit capability before releasing engineering drawings and production builds)