2008-08-24: Morris: System of Systems Governance

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Ed Morris, Pat Place, Dennis Smith, CMU 2006: System-of-Systems Governance: New Patterns of Thought

Systems of systems introduce complications for information technology (IT) governance because their individual system components exhibit considerable autonomy. When systems cross organizational boundaries, the development problems—and, by extension, IT governance problems—are multi-plied due to conflicting structures, policies, and expectations. The SoS characteristics discussed are

1. collaboration and authority,
2. motivation and accountability,
3. multiple models,
4. expectation of evolution,
5. highly fluid processes, and
6. minimal centrality.

[edit] SoS Characteistics

Systems of systems introduce a new set of issues that have significant implications for govern-ance. The following list of characteristics provided by Maier captures the essence of how a system of systems differs from a system [Maier 1998]:

• operational independence of the systems Each system within a system of systems has a “life of its own” and can function acceptably and provide useful service without necessarily interacting with other systems.
• managerial independence of the systems The individual systems within a system of systems are under different authorities. For exam-ple, within the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) different service branches will own dif-ferent systems in the context of a system of systems.
• evolutionary development The different systems within the system of systems are developed and upgraded on uncoor-dinated schedules. While current policies can coordinate the schedules for a relatively lim-ited number of systems within a system of systems, it is unlikely that such a policy can scale to a size of the Global Information Grid (GIG).