System-of-systems platform scoping

In a system of systems, interoperability among constituent systems is a primary architecture concern. One architecture strategy to promote interoperability in this design context is to create a system-of-systems platform to provide certain common services to all constituent systems, with the goal of reducing development effort for the constituent systems and reducing integration and assurance cost for the system of systems. A successful system-of-systems platform must balance sufficient commonality to support economical reuse, while also providing variability and extensibility to enable innovation in system and system of systems capabilities. These commonality/variability tradeoffs for system-of-systems platforms are frequently tacit decisions, since there are no existing techniques for analyzing such decisions at the scale and degree of requirements uncertainty that characterize most systems of systems.