Improving the Practice of DoD Architecting with the Architecture Specification Model
June 2005
Huei Wan Ang, The MITRE Corporation
Dave Nicholson, The MITRE Corporation
Brad Mercer, The MITRE Corporation
ABSTRACT
As the Department of Defense (DoD) moves towards the development of very large systems-of-systems intended to enhance and increase net-centricity (e.g. FORCEnet, LandWarNet, ConstellationNet) our ability to achieve the stated goals of these systems may be limited by our ability to architect them. Coincident with the emergence of such large efforts has been the realization of significant lessons learned during the first generation of DoD architecting practice.
Large-scale systems architecting within DoD and throughout the federal government is a fundamental practice. The DoD Architecture Framework1 (DoDAF) Version 1.0 serves to guide the DoD's architecture practice. As we come to the end of the first generation of such practice, we find that it is in jeopardy of failing to achieve future goals because of a lack of formal conceptual underpinnings. This paper proposes that the limiting factors are fundamental and result from inadequacies in the semantic foundations for describing such architectures. We describe an Architecture Specification Model that addresses these concerns and significantly improves the ability to use architecture to provide actionable information in support of the DoD's core processes.
Additional Search Keywords
architecture, architecture semantics, architecture data model, capability-based planning, DoDAF, enterprise architecture, portfolio management
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