Speaking with a Commonality Language: a Lexicon for System and Component Development

As the U.S. Army becomes increasingly interested in commonality –the sharing of common parts across different entities–there is a need for a clearer definition of the concept. Motivated by the reported costs arising from a lack of clear definitions during recent Army acquisition processes and by cases in which unclear definitions have led to significant problems, this report offers a new, more rigorous lexicon and illustrative examples.