Switch or Struggle: Risk Assessment for Late Integration of COTS Components

The domain requirements of software projects often seem so specialized to developers that their original design does not incorporate any commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) components. However, if major implementation problems are encountered at a later stage in the project, the integration of a COTS component that promises to solve those problems may become a desirable alternative to struggling on with the original implementation. While a number of methods and criteria have already been proposed for requirements engineering, risk assessment and candidate selection of COTS components, they were developed for application in the initial phases of a project and thus do not take into account the much tighter time and design constraints imposedin a later project stage. To spark discussion on necessary adaptations of the established methods, this position paper uses the example of a concrete project to illustrate the characteristics of “switch or struggle” situations and proposes an initial set of risk factors to be considered at that time

System requirements-OSS components: matching and mismatch resolution practices – an empirical study

Developing systems by integrating Open Source Software (OSS) is increasingly gaining importance in the software industry. Although the literature claims that this approach highly impacts Requirements Engineering (RE) practices, there is a lack of empirical evidence to demonstrate this statement. To explore and understand problems and challenges of current system requirement–OSS component matching and mismatches resolution practices in software development projects that integrate one or more OSS components into their software products. Semi-structured in-depth interviews with 25 respondents that have performed RE activities in software development projects that integrate OSS components in 25 different software development companies in Spain, Norway, Sweden, and Denmark. The study uncovers 15 observations regarding system requirements-OSS components matching and mismatch resolution practices used in industrial projects that integrate OSS components. The assessed projects focused mainly on pre-release stages of software applications that integrate OSS components in an opportunistic way. The results also provide details of a set of previously unexplored scenarios when solving system requirement–OSS component mismatches; and clarify some challenges and related problems. For instance, although licensing issues and the potential changes in OSS components by their corresponding communities and/or changes in system requirements have been greatly discussed in the RE literature as problems for OSS component integration, they did not appear to be relevant in our assessed projects. Instead, practitioners highlighted the problem of getting suitable OSS component documentation/information.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

A reutilização de requisitos no desenvolvimento e adaptação de produtos de software

Tese de doutoramento. Engenharia Electrotécnica e de Computadores. 2006. Faculdade de Engenharia. Universidade do Port