Architecting the system of systems enterprise: Enabling constructs and methods from the field of engineering systems

Engineering systems is a field of scholarship focused on developing fundamental theories and methods to address the challenges of large-scale complex systems in context of their socio-technical environments. The authors describe facets of their recent and ongoing research within the field of engineering systems to develop constructs and methods for architecting enterprises engaged in system-of-systems (SoS) engineering,. The ultimate goal of the research is to develop a framework for characterizing, designing, and evaluating SoS enterprise architectures throughout the system lifespan as various forces result in entering/exiting of constituent systems, changing environment, and shifting enterprise profile. The nature of systems-of-systems demands constructs for multi-dimensional architectural descriptions, as well as methods for design and evaluation that employ dynamic approaches. In this paper, two important elements in an emerging framework are described, including a holistic enterprise architecting framework and an epoch-based analysis method for examining possible futures of the SoS enterprise.