Towards a conceptual model for Software-intensive System-of-Systems

Software systems have become increasingly large and complex, often resulting from the integration of several operationally independent systems, thus leading to a new class of systems called Systems-of-Systems (SoS). Moreover, SoS have currently become essentially software-dependent systems, thus arising the Software-intensive Systems-of-Systems (SiSoS). However, in spite of their relevance, there is a lack of a common understanding of what exactly SiSoS are, their characteristics and types, as well as other elements that surround them. In this context, the main contribution of this work is to provide a conceptual model that provides a comprehensive understanding about them. For this purpose, we have extended the ISO/IEC/IEEE 42010 International Standard by considering related studies and previous taxonomies about SoS. In order to illustrate the use of our model, two software-intensive systems were analyzed and discussed. By establishing a common understanding about SiSoS, results achieved until now have showed us that this model can provide an important support to the research on SiSoS and, as a consequence, it can contribute to the development of these systems.