Abstract
COTS products are now ubiquitous and clearly have become a key factor in modern software systems development. If COTS are chosen poorly, a project will likely fail. As a result, the careful assessment of COTS products has become an essential element of the development process. There are numerous approaches to COTS assessment; however none of them address the crucial question of how much assessment effort to perform. If too little assessment is done, inappropriate COTS may be used; if too much assessment is done, the effort expended may place the project at risk. It is important to achieve a satisfactory balance between COTS uncertainty risks and risks resulting from project delay. To address this, we develop a method for the strategic planning of COTS assessment by determining “how much is enough” effort (in time, cost, or quality) with respect to critical project risk factors such as project schedule, market window, and a multitude of COTS assessment attributes such as availability, ease of use, maturity, and vendor support. The method is practical, and provides valuable aid in the planning of COTS based system development.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsPreview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Basili, V., Boehm, B.: COTS-Based Systems Top 10 List. IEEE Computer 34(5) (May 2001)
Ncube, C., Maiden, N.A.M.: PORE: Procurement-Oriented Requirements Engineering Method for the Component-Based Systems Engineering Development Paradigm. In: 1999 International Workshop on Component-Based Software Engineering (1999)
Ncube, C., Maiden, N.: COTS software selection: The need to make tradeoffs between system requirements, architectures and COTS components. In: COTS workshop. Continuing Collaborations for Successfull COTS Development (2000)
Alves, C., Finkelstein, A.: Challenges in COTS-Decision Making: A Goal-Driven Requirements Engineering Perspective. In: Workshop on Software Engineering Decision Support, in conjunction with SEKE 2002, Ischia, Italy (July 2002)
Kontio, J.: OTSO: A Systematic Process for Reusable Software Component Selection. CS-TR-3478, University of Maryland Technical Reports. University of Maryland. College Park, MD (1995)
Dukic, L.: Non -Functional Requirements for COTS Software Components. In: Workshop Ensuring Successful COTS Development (May 2000)
Dean, J.C.: Timing the Testing of COTS Software Products. In: Proceedings of the 1st Workshop on Testing Component Based Systems, Los Angeles, CA, NRC 41625 ,May 17, pp.5–8 (1999)
Alves, C., Castro, J.: CRE: A Systematic Method for COTS Components Selection. In: XV Brazilian Symposium on Software Engineering(SBES) Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (October 2001)
Tran, V., Liu, D.-B.: A Risk-Mitigating Model for the Development of Reliable and Maintainable Large-Scale Commercial-Off-The-Shelf Integrated Software Systems. In: Proceedings of the 1997 Annual Reliability and Maintainability Symposium, January 1997, pp. 361–367 (1997)
Jeanrenaud, J., Romanazzi, P.: Software Product Evaluation: A Methodological Approach. In: Software Quality Management II:Building Software into Quality, pp. 59–69 (1994)
Ochs, M., Pfahl, D., Chrobok-Diening, G., Nothelfer-Kolb, B.: A Method for Efficient Measurement-based COTS Assessment and Selection - Method Description and Evaluation Results. In: Pro. of the Seventh International Software Metrics Symposium METRICS 2001, London, April 2001, pp. 285–297 (2001)
Phillips, B.C., Polen, S.M.: Add Decision Analysis to Your COTS Selection Process, Software Technology Support Center Crosstalk (April 2002)
Boehm, B., Port, D., Yang, Y., Bhuta, J., Abts, C.: Composable Process Elements for Developing COTS-Based Applications (2002)
Dean, J., Vidger, M.: COTS Software Evaluation Techniques. In: Proceedings of The NATO Information Systems Technology. Symposium on Commercial Off-the-shelf Products in Defence Applications, Brussels, Belgium (April 2000)
Kunda, D., Brooks, L.: Applying Social-Technique approach for COTS selection. In: Proceedings of 4th UKAIS Conference, University of York, April 1999, McGraw Hill, New York (1999)
Gregor, S., Hutson, J., Oresky, C.: Storyboard Process to Assist in Requirements Verification and Adaptation to Capabilities Inherent in COTS. In: Dean, J., Gravel, A. (eds.) ICCBSS 2002. LNCS, vol. 2255, pp. 132–141. Springer, Heidelberg (2002)
Burgués, X., Estay, C., Franch, X., Pastor, J.A., Quer, C.: Combined selection of COTS components. In: Dean, J., Gravel, A. (eds.) ICCBSS 2002. LNCS, vol. 2255, pp. 54–64. Springer, Heidelberg (2002)
Comella-Dorda, S., Dean, J.C., Morris, E., Oberndorf, P.: A process for COTS Software Product Evaluation. In: Dean, J., Gravel, A. (eds.) ICCBSS 2002. LNCS, vol. 2255, pp. 86–92. Springer, Heidelberg (2002)
Ruhe, G.: Intelligent Support for Selection of COTS Products. In: Proceedings of the Net.ObjectDays 2002, Erfurt, Springer, Heidelberg (2003)
Carr, M.J., Konda, S.L., Monarch, I., Ulrich, F.C., Walker, C.F.: Taxonomy-Based Risk Identification, Software Engineering Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, Technical Report CMU/SEI-93-TR-6, ESC-TR-93-183 (June 1993)
Hall, E.M.: Managing Risk. Addison-Wesley Longman, Amsterdam (1998)
Boehm, B.: Software Risk Management: Principles and Practices. IEEE Software, 32–41 (January 1991)
Bertoa, M.F., Vallecillo, A.: Quality Attributes for COTS Components. In: Proc. of the 6th ECOOP Workshop on Quantitative Approaches in Object-Oriented Software Engineering (QAOOSE 2002), Málaga, Spain (June 2002)
Boehm, B., Abts, C., Brown, A.W., Chulani, S., Clark, B., Horowitz, E., Madachy, R., Reifer, D., Steece, B.: Software Cost Estimation with COCOMO II. Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs (2000)
Torchiano, M., Jaccheri, L.: Assessment of Reusable COTS Attributes. In: Erdogmus, H., Weng, T. (eds.) ICCBSS 2003. LNCS, vol. 2580, pp. 219–228. Springer, Heidelberg (2003)
Abts, C., Boehm, B., Bailey Clark, E.: COCOTS: A Software COTS-Based System (CBS) Cost Model. In: Proceedings, ESCOM 2001, April 2001, pp. 1–8 (2001)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2004 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Port, D., Chen, S. (2004). Assessing COTS Assessment: How Much Is Enough?. In: Kazman, R., Port, D. (eds) COTS-Based Software Systems. ICCBSS 2004. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 2959. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-24645-9_29
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-24645-9_29
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-21903-3
Online ISBN: 978-3-540-24645-9
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive