Software Engineering Institute

Context: A system of systems is an assemblage of components which individually may be regarded as systems, and which possess the additional properties that the constituent systems are operationally independent, and are managerially independent. Much has been published about the field of systems of systems by researchers and practitioners, often with the assertion that the system-of-systems design context necessitates the use of architecture approaches that are somewhat different from system-level architecture. However, no systematic review has been conducted to provide an extensive overview of system of systems architecture research. Objective: This paper presents such a systematic review. The objective of this review is to classify and provide a thematic analysis of the reported results in system of systems architecture. Method: The primary studies for the systematic review were identified using a predefined search strategy followed by an extensive manual selection process. Results: We found the primary studies published in a large number of venues, mostly domain-oriented, with no obvious center of a research community of practice. The field seems to be maturing more slowly than other software technologies: Most reported results described individuals or teams working in apparent isolation to develop solutions to particular system-of-systems architecture problems, with no techniques gaining widespread adoption. Conclusions: A comprehensive research agenda for this field should be developed, and further studies should be performed to determine whether the information system-related problems of system of systems architecture are covered by existing software architecture knowledge, and if not, to develop general methods for system-of-systems architecture.