Assessment of Process Modeling Tools to Support the Analysis of System of Systems Engineering Activities

Many organizations are attempting to provide new system capabilities through the net-centric integration of existing systems into systems of systems (SoS). The engineering activities used to architect and develop these SoS are often referred to as SoS Engineering (SoSE). Recent reports are indicating that SoSE activities are considerably different from classical systems engineering (SE) activities. Other systems engineering experts believe that there is nothing really different with respect to systems engineering activities or component-based engineering in the SoS environment—that there are only differences in scale and complexity. To better understand SoSE, studies are currently underway to evaluate the differences between classical SE and SoSE. This paper summarizes process areas to be investigated in the SE-SoSE comparison and then analyzes and evaluates several types of process modeling tools in order to identify a set of tools that can be used to capture classical SE and SoSE process characteristics for further comparison.