Value-based processes for COTS-based applications

Economic imperatives are changing the nature of software development processes to reflect both the opportunities and challenges of using COTS products. Processes are increasingly moving away from the time-consuming composition of custom software from lines of code (although these processes still apply for developing the COTS products themselves) toward assessment, tailoring, and integration of COTS or other reusable components. Two factors are driving this change: COTS or other reusable components can provide significant user capabilities within limited costs and development time, and more COTS products are becoming available to provide needed user functions.