Architecting Systems of Systems with Ilities: An Overview of the SAI Method

The uncertain and fast-changing nature of operational environments is driving a growing interest in systems that display desirable lifecycle properties (i.e., ilities). A survivable, flexible, or evolvable (among other properties) system is able to sustain value delivery over time by responding to exogenous changes in the operational environment. This paper introduces the SoS Architecting with Ilities (SAI) method, which enables systems architects to design for ilities from the conceptual design phase. An overview of the SAI method is presented, to expose the reader to the most important steps and activities of the method, and how they are specifically targeted at enabling SoS design with ilities.