Modeling an organizational view of the SoS towards managing its evolution

Managing the evolution of independent or loosely coupled systems of systems (SoS) is difficult. Much of the difficulty resides in the ways that elements are combined to make up the SoS and how those elements interface. The Systems Engineering Research Center has been studying how new governance mechanisms drawn from agile, lean and other adaptive approaches could be applied to systems of systems engineering. One of the current tasks is developing a broad, general purpose simulation platform designed to investigate how various combinations of organizational structure, work flow, and governance mechanisms affect the visibility, flow, and overall value produced in developing and evolving SoSs.