Dana Sulistiyo Kusumo

Risks of off-the-shelf-based software acquisition and development: A systematic mapping study and a survey

Background- Risks associated with a software project have the potential to affect all stakeholders. Today much software makes use of off-the-shelf (OTS) components. A better understanding of OTS-derived software risks will help to define responsibilities for these risks, and also to avoid them. Aim- Our objective is to identify, classify and compare risks of OTS-based software projects from both a software development and a software acquisition perspective. Method- To identify and classify the risks, we performed a systematic mapping study. In order to compare risks of OTS-based software development and acquisition in the real world setting, we used the mapping study results to survey occurrences of 11 shared risks in OTS-based software, in 35 OTS-based software developments and 34 OT-Sbased software acquisitions of Indonesian background. The survey is a partial replication of a previous study. Results- We identified 133 risks associated with OTS-based software development and 36 risks associated with OTS-based software acquisition. These risks are grouped into 17 risk categories. Risks occurred more frequently in software acquisition than in software development. In addition, two risks, insufficient OTS component documents and lack of provider technical support and training, frequently occurred only in the software development. Conclusions- In OTS-based projects, most risks for acquisition and development are similar. Technical-related risks are found less often in acquisition and project management related risks are found less often in development. Shared risks are perceived differently by developers and acquirers. Better understanding of actual and perceived risk in OTS-based software projects will improve risk management. Further work to validate these results is ongoing.

Understanding differences in process perspectives between developers and acquirers in off-the-shelf-based custom software projects undertaken in Indonesia

In Off-the-shelf (OTS)-based custom software projects there are common and different processes between software developers and acquirers. Better understanding of these differences may help to initiate reconciling perspectives between these stakeholders for managing the software processes. An online survey was conducted to explore the involvement of two main stakeholders in OTS-based software project, developer and acquirer, and also their roles in decision making in make vs. buy, and in OTS selection. The respondents were 35 software developers and 34 software acquirers of Indonesian background. Then, a follow-up study involving 4 respondents was conducted to investigate differences in process perspective between both stakeholders. Our study found that for common and unique processes, both stakeholders perceive to have high and medium involvement in their stakeholders processes. Only for detailed software design and coding, acquirer involvements in OTS-based custom software development were low. This study also found that each stakeholder perceives either themselves or both to make final decision on make vs. buy. In OTS-selection, both stakeholders agreed that developers had higher involvement. Based on the follow-up study findings, we proposed a model comparing and discussing stakeholder involvements, roles and responsibilities to reconcile these differences. A real example from the follow-up study findings was given to demonstrate the proposed model.