Beyond Technology Readiness Level 9: Measuring Aging and Contextual Relevance in System of Systems

The Technology Readiness Level (TRL) scale has been proposed and used for a few decades by NASA and the Department of Defense (DoD) to assess the maturity of a technology. The TRL measure starts at 1 and stops at 9 when the technology is accepted and initiates the operational phase of the lifecycle. The current TRL measure is not designed to monitor the system as it matures, ages, and eventually becomes obsolete. However, the DoD and NASA manage, maintain, and operate various system of systems that provide unique functions and services for prolonged lifecycles. Many of these systems of systems contain technologies that age, drift from their original requirements, experience restrictions from dynamic political and economic landscapes, and experience obsolescence through the introduction of disruptive technologies. There is a critical need for a new measure to monitor the status of the relevance of a system throughout its entire lifecycle. This paper proposes an extension to the existing TRL scale that picks up where the traditional TRL stops measuring (Level 9). We propose an extended Technology Relevance Level (eTRL) that measures the contextual relevance of a system beyond its original readiness level and monitors the risks associated with the system as it ages, adapts, faces various environmental, political, and economic changes, or becomes obsolete. The proposed extended measure will enable the stakeholders and program managers to describe the aging segments or systems within a legacy system and enable informed decisions of repairs, upgrades, investment in disruptive technologies, and retirement of such systems.