Concept of operations and the DoD architecture framework

Abstract

This thesis presents a framework for Concept of Operations (ConOps), based on the standards for capturing operations used in the government and industry. An understanding of operations early in system design is critical to the development of effective, successful systems. The current standards for Operational Concepts and the Operational Viewpoint of the Department of Defense Architecture Framework (DoDAF) outline lengthy descriptions that are cumbersome in the early stages of a system's development. The DoDAF Operational Viewpoint was analyzed in depth to distill the important information relevant to operations. This information was built into the System Architecture framework as a bottom-up approach of coordinating the operations of architecture, operators, and context in order to meet system goals. The resulting ConOps definition and framework was then compared against DoDAF Operational Viewpoint diagram samples in a Search and Rescue system case study, in order to validate the framework. The study found that the framework provides a shorter description with more clarity than the DoDAF diagrams.