Abstract

Selecting the right Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) software is critical to the success of Component-Based Software Engineering (CBSE) processes. The criteria for selecting COTS software are customer requirements, however requirements are difficult to acquire and model. This is one possible reason why most CBSE methods support systems design and integration rather than requirements engineering and COTS software selection. The lack of methods for COTS software selection is also surprising given the opportunities which CBSE offers requirements engineering. For example, stakeholders often have prior knowledge of candidate COTS software, so that the software development team can focus on acquiring requirements which discriminate most between candidates, and reject COTS software as relevant new requirements are acquired. This chapter presents a method for requirements engineering for CBSE.