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Choosing component origins for software intensive systems: in-house, COTS, OSS or outsourcing?--A case survey
Petersen K., Badampudi D., Shah S., Wnuk K., Gorschek T., Papatheocharous E., Axelsson J., Sentilles S., Crnkovic I., Cicchetti A. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering44 (3):237-261,2018.Type:Article
Date Reviewed: Nov 5 2018

Software-intensive systems are among the most common systems that run our everyday lives. International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 42010 introduces them as systems “in which software development and/or integration are dominant considerations.” Their complexity may vary significantly, requiring in some cases an architectural design up front. Those systems often reuse components that are already available (for example, frameworks, infrastructures, and libraries). Such components can be effectively created in-house, found in the general market (commercial/component off-the-shelf (COTS)), created by a community of developers (open-source software (OSS)), or even outsourced to a foreign company. But how does the decision on which component to utilize affect the resulting software-intensive system?

The authors perform a case survey following Larsson’s guidelines [1] on 22 industry cases. The presented research questions are divided into two big parts. In the first, the case survey researches the criteria by which components are chosen. The second focuses on understanding the outcomes of decision-making processes.

The major findings are related to the decision criteria (for example, performance, reliability, and compatibility, among others); how the decision is made (for example, who decides based on what input; usually the chief executive officer (CEO)/chief technology officer (CTO) uses expert opinions rather than, for example, Pugh analysis); and if the decision was “right” in retrospect, showing a positive ranking of OSS versus outsourced (for example, by evaluating financial criteria).

The paper tackles a very important aspect of component-based architecture, that is, evaluating how components are chosen and how this selection process may affect the final architecture. The results may be biased due to the fact that half of the case studies are defined by only one domain (automotive). The use cases are not described, and the authors do not correlate the software development strategy (for example, agile, iterative, and so on).

Reviewer:  Massimiliano Masi Review #: CR146306 (1902-0032)
1) Larsson, R.; , Case survey methodology: quantitative analysis of patterns across case studies. Academy of Management Journal 36, 6(1993), 1515–1546.
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