Multi-Disciplinary Insights into Measurement and Assessment for SoS

System of Systems;SoS;Measurement;Assessment;Best Practice;Metrics;Methodology

The assessment of performance and quality is essential to the engineering and evolution of Systems of Systems (SoS). However, there has been limited discussion of SoS measurement and evaluation in the literature. This paper reviews the measurement and assessment literature across multiple disciplines to address this gap. The review identifies relevant challenges and best practice elements within each discipline that are then compared against the nature and characteristics of SoS. Best practice elements are then synthesized into three key areas necessary for SoS evaluation: measurement, determination of good metrics, and assessment. While further work has been identified and initiated on the development of methods for the generation of such metrics, this study provides practitioners with the core practices and principles necessary to enable tailored and enhanced SoS assessment.