A Technical History of the SEI

Adoption, and Reuse Technique), which is a family of techniques 56 that helps organizations migrating
legacy applications to a service-oriented architecture by making better decisions about
SOA adoption [SEI 2013, Lewis 2008b].
The Consequence: Well-Informed Decisions Using Tools and Techniques
The SEI has provided to the DoD and defense contractors tools and techniques for making wellinformed
decisions about systems of systems based on data, both quantitative and qualitative.
They are better able to integrate additional, separately developed systems into their systems of
systems, even with incomplete technical, operational, and business information. They are aware
that, for systems of systems, the organizational impact is an essential element of system design
and deployment. They are aware that their acquisition approach must mirror a realistic view of
software and systems engineering when interoperability is a high priority. They have principles
and techniques for determining the feasibility of and building a plan for moving to a system-ofsystems
environment. They have the additional benefit of SEI case studies that illustrate, for example,
decisions by government organizations on the interoperability of systems and whether legacy
systems can be migrated to a SOA environment.
The SEI Contribution
The SEI has provided unbiased guidance and techniques to aid the successful engineering, governing,
and acquisition of systems of systems. In addition, the SEI developed case studies and
training courses. It applied its research findings to real-world situations through engagements with
customers. Those experiences and collaborations with other researchers enabled SEI experts to
develop, pilot, mature, and make available system-of-systems tools and methods for migrating
new and legacy systems to system-of-systems environments and for evaluating the effectiveness
of systems interoperability technologies. The SEI SoS work influenced products that were sponsored
by the Office of the Secretary of Defense [OSD 2008]. The early SEI work on SoS principles
and concepts included defining characteristics of a system of systems. Here the SEI adapted
work by Maier [Maier 1998] and others, such as White [White 2005].
References
[Anderson 2007] Anderson, Bill; Boxer, Philip J.; Morris, Edwin J.; & Smith, Dennis B. “The
Double Challenge in Engineering Complex Systems of Systems.” News at SEI. Software Engineering
Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, 2007. http://www.sei.cmu.edu/library/abstracts/news-at-sei/eyeonintegration200705.cfm
[Boxer 2008] Boxer, Philip; Carney, David; Garcia-Miller, Suzanne; Brownsword, Lisa; Anderson,
William; Kirwan, Patrick; Smith, Dennis; & Morley, John. SoS Navigator 2.0: A Context-
Based Approach to System-of-Systems Challenges (CMU/SEI-2008-TN-001). Software Engineering
Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, 2008. http://resources.sei.cmu.edu/library/assetview.cfm?AssetID=8515
60 See http://www.sei.cmu.edu/architecture/tools/smart/index.cfm and [Lewis 2008b] for descriptions.
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