Achieving agility and flexibility in systems of systems requires governance that is highly decentralized. Otherwise, conflict arises between a centralized governance model and operational needs. The Governance Alignment Analysis (GAA) technique is designed to reveal imbalances between existing and needed governance practice.

GAA works by forming a profile of the organizations participating in the system of systems along eight critical dimensions (e.g., policy and collaboration). Then, analysis reveals gaps between current and needed governance mechanisms and structures along these eight dimensions.

All participants in a system-of-systems effort—from senior leaders and enterprise CIOs, to program and technical managers, to system implementers and end users—can use GAA to develop an understanding of the distribution of governance across the system of systems.

GAA has been piloted successfully in a civil government setting to accurately characterize governance gaps.