Governing the Recovery of Stalled Systems-of-Systems: ADAPT, a Dependency-Anchored Methodology, with Multi-Case Feasibility Illustrations

Abstract

Systems-of-systems (SoSs) integrate constituents that retain operational and managerial independence, and that independence leaves their engineering artifacts prone to drift: changes fail to propagate, misalignment surfaces late, and outputs accumulate that trace to no validated need. A recurring consequence is a stalled SoS: years of effort across independent teams yielding no usable, connected baseline. The SoS-engineering and complex-system-governance literature describes what governance should achieve but under-specify how to recover one that has lost coherence. This paper introduces ADAPT (Anchor, Dependency, Allocation, Production, Traceability), whose components operationalize the integrating purposes a stalled SoS has lost: communication, coordination, control, and integration. It enhances rather than replaces control boards and program offices. ADAPT is illustrated through four de-identified cases (feasibility evidence, not a test) under a case-study protocol; in the lead case, six prior teams under the same program’s funding and sponsorship had produced no usable baseline, whereas the ADAPT-led attempt reached an approved one in four months against an eighteen-month plan of record. The evidence is retrospective, single-organization, and uncontrolled, supporting this paper’s propositions analytically rather than statistically. ADAPT’s measures are exercised on independent public data as construct validation and premise checks, and a confirmatory study with falsification conditions is specified for pre-registration.