In an effort to open the lines of communication among the Navy’s modeling and simulation community and to standardize how models from multiple development teams could be integrated into one or more simulation tools, the Office of Naval Research established the Torpedo Enterprise Advance Modeling and Simulation (TEAMS) program. The TEAMS initiative adopted The Open Group Architecture Framework (TOGAF) as its architecture method and The Object Management Group’s (OMG’s) model-driven architecture (MDA) specifications to standardize how models from multiple development teams could be integrated into one or more simulation tools. This article describes the use of these two very popular and complementary standards that define and implement business integration processes and requirements and discusses the business and IT-level benefits achieved via aligning TOGAF and MDA. As part of this, it will also address the following:
- What benefits does enterprise architecture provide to the business?
- Is there a proven method for building an effective enterprise architecture practice that is widely adopted?
- How can IT actively engage the business to deliver ongoing business value?
- How can IT enable rapid adaptation to continual changes in business and technology?
- How can an organization support a sustainable enterprise architecture practice using industry standards and appropriate tools?
Several organizations have a long history of developing and continuing to evolve modeling and simulation tools for the U.S. Navy that are used to develop systems and evaluate system performance in a variety of business and technical scenarios. While these organizations developed comparable tools with similar components to satisfy their sponsors’ modeling and simulation needs, there was very little interaction between them as to what tools were available and under which conditions they were best applicable. In addition, several components with similar functionality but varying fidelity were developed in parallel, with no forethought of how to integrate a lower fidelity version with a higher fidelity representation if a sponsor were to desire more realism in a business scenario demanding a system simulation.
The Office of Naval Research established the Torpedo Enterprise Advance Modeling and Simulation (TEAMS) program (TEAMS, 2007) to open the lines of communication among the Navy’s modeling and simulation community, and to standardize how models from multiple development teams could be integrated into one or more simulation tools.
Two organizations participating in the TEAMS program, the Applied Research Laboratory of The Pennsylvania State University (ARL/PSU) and the Naval Undersea Warfare Center, Division Newport, were tasked to establish an Undersea Warfare M&S Consortium. The Consortium would be responsible for defining and developing a cross-enterprise, collaborative undersea warfare modeling and simulation environment, while utilizing reusable components that can be composed into highly integrated simulations. The simulation environment would be driven by an open systems architecture framework that would result in the sharing and leveraging of both legacy and new-development resources. It would support both the development of modeling and simulation tools and the application of these tools across the lifecycle of undersea weapons.
TEAMS and TOGAF
Because the Naval Undersea Warfare Center, Division Newport, and ARL/PSU did not have experience developing a collaborative working environment among multiple organizations, they investigated the existence of other consortia to possibly leverage lessons learned. Their search brought them to The Open Group.
In the process of learning about Consortium management, the Naval Undersea Warfare Center, Division Newport, and ARL/PSU learned about TOGAF architecture development methodology (ADM). They quickly realized this process was essential to achieving the architecture goals of the TEAMS program.
