ACHIEVING MISSION ASSURANCE - Raytheon
ACHIEVING MISSION ASSURANCE - Raytheon
ACHIEVING MISSION ASSURANCE - Raytheon
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Feature<br />
Applying Mission Assurance Attributes to Net-Centric Architectures<br />
Net-Centricity is a foundation of<br />
the Global Information Grid<br />
(GIG), an important architectural<br />
concept that enables information<br />
availability and service sharing among<br />
various customer user communities —<br />
and one that critically impacts<br />
Mission Assurance.<br />
Clearly communicating the concept of<br />
the GIG and explaining how net-centric<br />
architectures (NCAs) provide Mission<br />
Assurance (MA) has historically been a<br />
struggle and is frequently the subject of<br />
much confusion and debate. Eliciting concrete<br />
definitions of these concepts, along<br />
with examples to provide better understanding,<br />
is highly desirable. Even more<br />
desirable would be the development of a<br />
process that demonstrates their meaning<br />
and value for the entire <strong>Raytheon</strong> engineering<br />
community developing NCAs.<br />
Accordingly, at <strong>Raytheon</strong>’s 2005<br />
SETN/SWTN (Systems Engineering/Software<br />
Engineering Technology Network)<br />
Workshop held this past September, the<br />
NCA Technology Interest Group (TIG) and<br />
the Architecture Process TIG jointly recommended<br />
a special TIG project. This project<br />
would identify and assess the quality attributes<br />
and particular architectural features of<br />
NCAs that improve both the development<br />
efficiency and quality of those architectures<br />
that must support MA. The project would<br />
first develop a simple process framework<br />
to aid in the desired assessment. The<br />
<strong>Raytheon</strong> Technology Networks approved<br />
the project in October 2005. This article<br />
provides an overview of the project along<br />
with accomplishments to date and a brief<br />
description of future plans.<br />
Project Overview<br />
The project strategy is to select and use a<br />
candidate, representative net-centric system<br />
architecture to provide a useful context for<br />
gauging its impact on MA. The project plan<br />
then calls for the selection and use of a<br />
methodology (e.g., the Architecture<br />
Tradeoff and Analysis Method ® (ATAM ® )<br />
or the Zachman Framework, among other<br />
possibilities) to help assess and define the<br />
20 2006 ISSUE 1 RAYTHEON TECHNOLOGY TODAY<br />
selected NCA’s ability to support Mission<br />
Assurance. In particular, the project seeks<br />
to investigate specifically chosen quality<br />
attributes related to MA — including availability,<br />
modifiability, performance, security,<br />
testability and usability — to identify, capture<br />
and select those features such as<br />
design patterns, heuristics and standards of<br />
NCAs which best support MA.<br />
Phase 0<br />
Partnership<br />
& Prep<br />
Phase 1<br />
Initial<br />
Evaluation<br />
Phase 3<br />
Follow-up<br />
Present<br />
the ATAM<br />
Presentation<br />
The end goals of the project are to:<br />
develop recommended approaches for<br />
identifying MA-related characteristics<br />
(i.e., attributes) for NCAs;<br />
identify MA-related architectural constructs<br />
for incorporating those attributes<br />
in NCAs;<br />
describe recommendations for capturing<br />
MA-related constructs in standard architectural<br />
documentation artifacts (e.g.,<br />
ATAM templates, DoDAF views); and<br />
describe the selected methodology and<br />
its application in developing architectures.<br />
It should be noted that assessing the selected<br />
architecture itself (i.e., determining the<br />
specific architecture’s adequacy in addressing<br />
MA attributes) is not a particular goal<br />
of the project, but merely a means to an<br />
end. The results of the assessment, however,<br />
may be useful to the selected architecture’s<br />
program.<br />
Project Accomplishments<br />
The project first selected a candidate<br />
net-centric architecture from an ongoing<br />
<strong>Raytheon</strong> project to serve as the notional<br />
example for the assessment. (Due to customer<br />
proprietary reasons, the details of<br />
the project are not disclosed here.) A<br />
ATAM ATO-Lite<br />
Exchange understanding about ATAM and eval process<br />
Present the<br />
Business<br />
Drivers<br />
Present<br />
Architecture<br />
Identify the<br />
Architectural<br />
Approaches<br />
Generate<br />
the QA<br />
Utility Tree<br />
Analyze the<br />
Architectural<br />
Approaches<br />
Investigation (evaluation and architecture teams<br />
Brainstorm<br />
& Prioritize<br />
Scenarios<br />
Analyze the<br />
Architectural<br />
Approaches<br />
Present the<br />
Results<br />
Testing (eval, arch & stakeholder teams)<br />
Produce final report<br />
Reporting<br />
Phase 2<br />
Complete<br />
Evaluation<br />
variety of factors was used to select the<br />
architecture, including its size (i.e., neither<br />
so small that its assessment would be trivial<br />
nor so large that it couldn’t be assessed<br />
within the project’s cost and schedule<br />
constraints), availability of architectural<br />
information and access to program<br />
personnel.<br />
Present<br />
the ATAM<br />
1/2 HR - ST<br />
Figure 1. Evolution of ATM process into ATO Lite process<br />
Present the<br />
Business<br />
Drivers<br />
Presentation<br />
Identify the Generate<br />
Architectural the QA<br />
Approaches Utility Tree<br />
Investigation (evaluation and architecture teams<br />
Brainstorm Analyze the<br />
& Prioritize Architectural<br />
Scenarios Approaches<br />
Testing (eval, arch & stakeholder teams)<br />
Present<br />
Architecture<br />
Present the<br />
Results<br />
Reporting<br />
Next, the project determined the assessment<br />
methodology to be used; namely, an<br />
“abridged” version of ATAM. ATAM was<br />
developed by the Software Engineering<br />
Institute (SEI) as an extensive, robust<br />
architecture evaluation methodology to<br />
determine a software architecture’s suitability<br />
for its intended purpose. In essence,<br />
ATAM examines the adequacy and consequences<br />
of architectural decisions as they<br />
relate to the program’s quality and business<br />
goals. Note that while the SEI does not<br />
publicize ATAM’s use for system architecture<br />
evaluation, our team found it to be<br />
directly applicable to the aims of our project.<br />
Since assessing the candidate architecture<br />
wasn’t an end goal of the project, we<br />
identified a subset of ATAM activities that<br />
would be sufficient for the project’s purpose.<br />
This subset is a less formal, less<br />
thorough, and less time- and cost-intensive<br />
execution of ATAM. As such, we focused<br />
squarely on Mission Assurance-related<br />
concerns. One of the benefits of this<br />
“abridged” version of ATAM, hereafter<br />
referred to as “ATO (Architecture Trade Off)<br />
Lite,” is that it can be applied as part of the<br />
initial architecture development (i.e., in a<br />
“forward looking” fashion, as opposed to<br />
evaluating a generated architecture in a<br />
X<br />
Review<br />
materials<br />
offline -<br />
2 hour<br />
meeting<br />
to clarify<br />
Start with<br />
check list