Tool support for Model-based Capability Development

An enterprise can be viewed as a complex, sociotechnical system in which a number of interconnected components interact in order to realise the strategic goal of the enterprise. The combination of personnel (of various background, culture and experience) with technical systems and processes makes it difficult for the enterprise management to identify what critical factors affect the strategic goal of the enterprise. Today Enterprise Architecture (EA) is used to describe and analyse a complex enterprise from a holistic perspective. An enterprise architecture captures \what happens" in an organisation, i.e., how activities, processes, functions, systems, information resources and other components combine and relate to the goal and purpose of the enterprise. The Swedish Armed Forces have decided to use EA, and, more specifi- cally, MODAF (Ministry of Defence Architecture Framework), throughout its capability development. Irrespective of MODAF, a model based approach will be central to the capability development during the coming years. The introduction of a model based approach, however, does not occur over night. Even if EA frameworks such as MODAF has the potential to considerably improve capability development as such, training, methods, processes, tools, etc. are also needed. This report identifies a number of technologies, primarily taken from the Modelling and Simulation (M&S) field, which support an enterprise architect in constructing, evaluating and visualising models. M&S support for model based capability development ("M&S-stöd för MBFU") is a research and technology ("FoT") project with the purpose of developing M&S-based methods and tools that can assist the capability development within the MBFU. In order to identify existing needs, the project started with a requirement analysis that gave insight into the needs associated with both the use and development of architecture within the Swedish Armed Forces. Subsequently, the project performed a state-of-the-art survey in a number of selected subject areas that could contribute to analysis and decision support within MBFU; this report is the result of the survey. The report describes state-of-the-art in a number of areas with strong relevance to MBFU, including semantic technologies, agent technologies, EA-analysis, simulation tools, and planning. The starting point for the report is the belief that EA has the potential to be used not only for description and communication but also for analysis. To help the reader not familiar with EA, the report includes an introduction to EA with a summary of commercially available EA tools.