A case study in applying a systematic method for COTS selection
Proceedings of the 18th international conference on Software engineering
Investigating and improving a COTS-based software development
Proceedings of the 22nd international conference on Software engineering
A knowledge-based COTS-aware requirements engineering approach
SEKE '02 Proceedings of the 14th international conference on Software engineering and knowledge engineering
Specification, implementation, and deployment of components
Communications of the ACM
COTS Integration: Plug and Pray?
Computer
COTS-Based Systems Top 10 List
Computer
COTS Software: The Economical Choice?
IEEE Software
Acquiring COTS Software Selection Requirements
IEEE Software
What Do You Mean by COTS? Finally, a Useful Answer
IEEE Software
Developing New Processes for COTS-Based Systems
IEEE Software
The Limitations of Current Decision-Making Techniques in the Procurement of COTS Software Components
ICCBSS '02 Proceedings of the First International Conference on COTS-Based Software Systems
Rethinking Process Guidance for Selecting Software Components
ICCBSS '02 Proceedings of the First International Conference on COTS-Based Software Systems
COTS-Based Development: Taking the Pulse of a Project
ICCBSS '03 Proceedings of the Second International Conference on COTS-Based Software Systems
Not All CBS Are Created Equally: COTS-Intensive Project Types
ICCBSS '03 Proceedings of the Second International Conference on COTS-Based Software Systems
METRICS '01 Proceedings of the 7th International Symposium on Software Metrics
Component-based systems development: challenges and lessons learned
STEP '97 Proceedings of the 8th International Workshop on Software Technology and Engineering Practice (STEP '97) (including CASE '97)
A Software Development Process for COTS-based Information System Infrastructure
SAST '97 Proceedings of the 5th International Symposium on Assessment of Software Tools (SAST '97)
Overlooked Aspects of COTS-Based Development
IEEE Software
Observations on versioning of off-the-shelf components in industrial projects (short paper)
Proceedings of the 12th international workshop on Software configuration management
Data sets and data quality in software engineering
Proceedings of the 4th international workshop on Predictor models in software engineering
The incremental commitment model process patterns for rapid-fielding projects
ICSP'10 Proceedings of the 2010 international conference on New modeling concepts for today's software processes: software process
Software test automation in practice: empirical observations
Advances in Software Engineering - Special issue on software test automation
Information Processing Letters
A study of COTS integration projects: product characteristics, organization, and life cycle models
Proceedings of the 28th Annual ACM Symposium on Applied Computing
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More and more software projects use Commercial-Off-The-Shelf (COTS) components. Although previous studies have proposed specific COTS-based development processes, there are few empirical studies that investigate how to use and customize COTS-based development processes for different project contexts. This paper describes an exploratory study of state-of-the-practice of COTS-based development processes. Sixteen software projects in the Norwegian IT companies have been studied by structured interviews. The results are that COTS-specific activities can be successfully incorporated in most traditional development processes (such as waterfall or prototyping), given proper guidelines to reduce risks and provide specific assistance. We have identified four COTS-specific activities--the build vs. buy decision, COTS component selection, learning and understanding COTS components, and COTS component integration --- and one new role, that of a knowledge keeper. We have also found a special COTS component selection activity for unfamiliar components, combining Internet searches with hands-on trials. The process guidelines are expressed as scenarios, problems encountered, and examples of good practice. They can be used to customize the actual development processes, such as in which lifecycle phase to put the new activities into. Such customization crucially depends on the project context, such as previous familiarity with possible COTS components and flexibility of requirements.