Development with Off-the-Shelf Components: 10 Facts

  • Authors:

  • Jingyue Li;Reidar Conradi;Christian Bunse;Marco Torchiano;Odd Petter N. Slyngstad;Maurizio Morisio

  • Affiliations:

  • Norwegian University of Science and Technology;Norwegian University of Science and Technology;International University;Politecnico di Torino;Norwegian University of Science and Technology;Politecnico di Torino

  • Venue:
  • IEEE Software
  • Year:
  • 2009

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Abstract

Several empirical studies have been conducted on issues related to the development of systems using commercial off-the-shelf and open source software components. The results demonstrate a discrepancy between academic theory and industrial practices regarding the use of components. One reason is that researchers have empirically evaluated only a few theoretical methods; so, industrial practitioners have no reason to adopt them. Another reason might be that researchers have specified the application contexts of only a small number of theories in sufficient detail to avoid misleading users. Academic researchers often hold false assumptions about industry. For example, research on requirement negotiations often assumes that a client will be interested in, and be capable of, discussing a project's technical details. However, in practice this is usually not true. In addition, the quality of a component in the final system is often attributed solely to component quality before integration, ignoring quality improvements by integrators during component integration.