Assessing COTS assessment: how much is enough?

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.© Springer-Verlag 2004.