Glossary term
Trade-off analysis
Also: Option trade-off, Sensitivity analysis
The explicit documentation of what each option gives up to deliver its strengths. Good trade-off analysis makes the cost of the winning option as visible as its benefits, and shows how robust the choice is to changes in weights.
Every real decision involves trade-offs. A memo that lists only the strengths of the chosen option is a sales document, not a decision record. The audit value of a memo comes from the explicit acknowledgement of what was traded away.
Three analytical moves make trade-off analysis useful: compare each option against the chosen one on the dimension the chosen one loses, show the sensitivity of the ranking to the weight of the contested criteria, and name the residual risk that the trade-off creates.
Under DORA Art. 6 and NIS2 Art. 21, risk acceptance is a named management act. Trade-off analysis is how a memo makes risk acceptance legible to the management body rather than buried in spreadsheet cells.
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