by Philip Boxer
CrossTalk, The Journal of Defense Software Engineering, has published an article on the Modeling and Analysis of Interoperability Risk in Systems of Systems Environments in its November 2008 Issue. The abstract is as follows:
This article describes the use of a set of modeling and analysis techniques in an interoperability risk probe that found gaps in the ability of a North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) modernization program to react to changing demands. The modeling and analysis techniques were used to create models of the people, processes, and technologies of the program and to represent the way demands were placed on this complex socio-technical system. Analysis of the models revealed interoperability risks that were manifested in the linkages between operational requirements of functional capabilities and the way in which those capabilities were being maintained. The risks identified in this probe were typed as mission, composition, and performance risks. The structural models produced by the techniques bring a welcome engineering rigor to the process of examining interoperability.
The article, by Bill Anderson and Philip Boxer, summarises work done originally in 2006 by Boxer Research Ltd under contract to the Software Engineering Institute at Carnegie Mellon University.