Abstract

Successful selection of COTS software is difficult. It integrates 2 processes - multi-criteria decision making and requirements engineering- which are both complex and problematic. The selection of COTS software is a multi-criteria decision-making process. However, it is problematic because the selection criteria (i.e. the requirements) are often incomplete and inter-dependent, and rarely one COTS software satisfies all of the criteria. However, when selecting anti-virus systems, there are added problems. The reason is that for the anti-virus systems, is that you can not just run and test the software as you would do in other systems. This paper reports some lessons learned in the selection of a anti-virus software for a merchant bank. These lessons were later incorporated into a method for COTS software selection