S.O.B (Save Our Budget) - A Simulation-Based Method for Prediction of Acquisition Costs of Constituents of a System-of-Systems

Abstract


 
 
 Software economics, acquisition, and pricing are important con- cerns for Systems-of-Systems (SoS). SoS are alliances of independent software- intensive systems combined to offer holistic functionalities as a result of the con- stituents interoperability. SoS engineering involves separately acquiring con- stituents and combining them to form the SoS. Despite the existence of cost pre- diction techniques, predicting SoS acquisition costs at design-time should also include the analysis of different suppliers of constituents, their respective prices and quality. However, known methods cover only two out of these three param- eters. The main contribution of this article is to present the S.O.B. (Save Our Budget) method, a novel simulation-based method to predict, at design-time, the acquisition cost of constituents, while still considering quality attributes and different suppliers. Results of a case study in the Smart Building domain re- vealed that S.O.B. method supports a precise prediction of acquisition cost of constituents to build a SoS for that domain. Furthermore, it also contributes to estimate the cost based on a pre-established quality attribute (functional suit- ability), as well as to support the selection of coalition that exhibits better results through the analysis of cost-benefit ratio.