Commercial-Off-The-Shelf Software Development Framework

Budget and schedule savings are the driving factors for the adoption of commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) software components by software development organizations. The reliance on COTS components has lead to component-based development (CBD) software systems and introduced changes to the software development process and hence software project management responsibilities and roles. This paper introduces a general framework discussion of essential management aspects for CBD, focusing on COTS. Particularly, stakeholders, requirements, component selection and architecture management issues are discussed from different angles. Some CBD management guidelines and best practices for these aspects are outlined in the conclusion. In addition, CBD management challenges are drawn along with some suggestions in the conclusion section.