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Byline: Brian J. Sauser, Jose E. Ramirez-Marquez, Devanandham Henry, Donald DiMarzio In the United States (USA) National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the USA Department of Defense (DoD) the Technology Readiness Level (TRL) scale is a measure of maturity of an individual technology, with a view towards operational use in a system context. A comprehensive set of concerns becomes relevant when this metric is abstracted from an individual technology to a system context. This paper proposes the development of a system-focused approach for managing system development and making effective and efficient decisions during a systems engineering life cycle. This paper presents a System Readiness Level (SRL) index that incorporates both the current TRL scale and an Integration Readiness Level (IRL) and provides a method for determining readiness of a system in the systems engineering life cycle. This paper concludes with a general discuss of the implication of the proposed SRL and how this may be applied to four case examples.