John S. Osmundson

Quality management metrics for software development

It can be argued that the quality of software management has an effect on the degree of success or failure of a software development program. We have developed a metric for measuring the quality of software management along four dimensions: requirements management, estimation/planning management, people management, and risk management. The quality management metric (QMM) for a software development program manager is a composite score obtained using a questionnaire administered to both the program manager and a sample of his or her peers. The QMM is intended to both characterize the quality of software management and serve as a template for improving software management performance. We administered the questionnaire to measure the performance of managers responsible for large software development programs within the US Department of Defense (DOD). Informal verification and validation of the metric compared the QMM score to an overall program-success score for the entire program; this resulted in a positive correlation.

A Systems Engineering Methodology for Information Systems

Complex information systems are often developed without systematic consideration of architectural alternatives partially because systems engineers have lacked a methodology for performing quantitative trade studies of networked systems of sensors, processors, and communications systems. In this paper an approach is discussed for analyzing time-critical information systems and performing systems trades. Information systems are described in terms of design factors with discrete factor levels. Object-oriented models are constructed of the information systems and simulations are run to obtain system measures of performance. Design of experiments is used to drastically reduce the number of models required. The approach is illustrated for an example combat identification information system.

Contracting processes and structures for systems-of-systems acquisition

Acquisition of a system-of-systems can be an all new acquisition of multiple systems that are intended to operate together as a system-of-systems. Much more common in the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) is acquisition of one or more new systems that are intended to interoperate with existing systems as a system of systems (SoS) with new capabilities. In either case, successful SoS acquisition necessarily depends on effective contracting structures and processes for SoS acquisition. In this paper, a set of issues that need to be addressed in SoS acquisition are identified, and the current findings discussed. The findings suggest maintaining an extensive systems engineering effort within the SoS acquisition and changes to the existing contracting processes, structures, and organizational structures to maximize the probability of SoS acquisition success. The resulting changes are recommended to current and future DoD SoS acquisitions. ©2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Syst Eng 15

Assessing the Performance of ad hoc Sensor Networks

As an exploratory effort to understand effects of network complexity coupled with interoperability on performance of ad hoc sensor networks, we treat ad hoc sensor networks as random networks. In this work complexity is reflected by the average degree of the network and interoperability by the mean number of sensors in the network that are interoperable. The average degree of the network in this case depends on both the probability of sensor discovery and the probability of sensor connection. For illustration purposes, we consider the binary hypothesis distributed fusion problem and a simple fusion rule. The result shows that the criterion for successful fusion may be violated by the network conditions that depend on the network complexity and interoperability.

Scrambling on electrical power grids

Deregulated, the U.S. electrical power grid system has shown the emergence of behaviors that include scrambling by buyers to purchase electricity and unexpected increasing costs of electricity to consumers. To infer those behaviors, in this paper, we adapt a theoretical framework, developed by Newman in his work on spread of epidemic disease on networks, to the propagation of electricity buying and selling in a power grid system. Specifically, we represent the electrical power grid as a random bipartite graph of electricity sellers and buyers, which is then projected to a one-mode network of interacting buyers. The so-called transaction transferability among buyers is calculated as a function of the offered buying prices. The average number of buyers scrambling to buy electricity is obtained as a function of the transaction transferability. Together, the transaction transferability and the average number of scrambling buyers indicate that scrambles for electricity buying drive up costs to buyers.