Facilitating Collaboration between COTS Stakeholders via Principles of Advanced ISD Methods: The Vendor Perspective

Commercial-off-the-Shelf (COTS) systems continue to evolve after acquisition while adapting to an ever-changing organizational environment. Many software changes are delivered through the change request (CR) knowledge-intensive process that can be viewed as a small development cycle. In this study we mapped COTS-related risks documented in literature to COTS-based systems development (CBSD) phases. We then analyzed evidence for knowledge gaps between stakeholders, such as misunderstanding systems and business aspects, which hinder CR delivery. For each gap we mapped related risks and proposed methods, taken from advanced information system development (ISD) methodologies focused on human, collaborative and knowledge aspects, as mitigation strategies. Our analysis indicates that these methods, which encourage collaboration and knowledge sharing, can serve as feasible mitigation strategies for the knowledge gaps found in the study. Taking a knowledge-centric perspective of the CBSD process by mitigating risks via human-centric development methods is the first step toward a new model for risk management in CBSD.