Architecting the System of Systems Enterprise: Enabling Constructs and Methods from the Field of Engineering Systems

Engineering systems is a field of scholarship focused on developing fundamental theories and methods to address the challenges of large-scale complex systems in context of their socio-technical environments. The authors describe facets of their recent and ongoing research within the field of enginee...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Rhodes, Donna H., Ross, Adam Michael, Nightingale, Deborah J.
Other Authors: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Center for Technology, Policy, and Industrial Development
Format: Article
Language:en_US
Published: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers 2010
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/60049
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1907-0717
Description
Summary:Engineering systems is a field of scholarship focused on developing fundamental theories and methods to address the challenges of large-scale complex systems in context of their socio-technical environments. The authors describe facets of their recent and ongoing research within the field of engineering systems to develop constructs and methods for architecting enterprises engaged in system-of-systems (SoS) engineering,. The ultimate goal of the research is to develop a framework for characterizing, designing, and evaluating SoS enterprise architectures throughout the system lifespan as various forces result in entering/exiting of constituent systems, changing environment, and shifting enterprise profile. The nature of systems-of-systems demands constructs for multi-dimensional architectural descriptions, as well as methods for design and evaluation that employ dynamic approaches. In this paper, two important elements in an emerging framework are described, including a holistic enterprise architecting framework and an epoch-based analysis method for examining possible futures of the SoS enterprise.