The Department of Defense announced on Tuesday the release of a guidebook that offers best practices for planning, implementing and evaluating a modular open systems approach, dubbed MOSA, and provides recommendations when developing requests for proposals and assessing planned approaches for implementing MOSA.
The Office of Systems Engineering and Architecture within the DOD Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering developed the guidebook, which seeks to provide military services, contractors and civilians with information on how to integrate MOSA into programs as part of the defense acquisition life cycle.
MOSA Pillars
The document outlines DOD’s MOSA pillars, including establishing and maintaining an enabling environment that supports MOSA and employing a modular design.
Designating modular interfaces, leveraging consensus-based open standards and certifying conformance are the three other MOSA pillars discussed in the guidebook.
DOD Considerations for MOSA Implementation
The guidebook outlines DOD’s program management and technical considerations for implementing MOSA.
Prior to MOSA implementation, the acquisition program should adopt a basic framework to plan, identify, manage, define and ensure the compliance of system interfaces.
The document states that the framework should be implemented and maintained throughout the acquisition life cycle and help ensure that program managers capture all interface requirements in accordance with the program’s acquisition strategy.
The guidebook also highlights the technical areas to consider when implementing MOSA, including work breakdown structure, MOSA-enabling standards and specifications, software-specific considerations, cybersecurity and commercial off-the-shelf components.
