My experience is that companies often jump on technologies or methodologies that sell the idea of faster development.

Years ago I was involved in a project where the customer chose the company I worked for to provide a solution but the customer’s IT Director had read that Object Orientation was the way to go and insisted that my company adopt the methodology. Unfortunately, my company had no experience of OO and much heartache was the result all round. I have witnessed similar problems with RUP and Agile.

Another problem is that sales reps for various technology companies get introduced to businesses through their networks and they extol the cost saving benefits of their particular product and the fact that it “can do anything you need it to do”. In other words, customers sometimes buy technologies, not based on the needs of the business, but based on who played golf with whom.

Yet another problem is that, in my experience, companies are not good at recognising the need for business analysis before defining the requirements or choosing the technology, with the result that it is not done, or it is not done well. In my experience, when they actually do business analysis, they get their own SMEs (untrained in the techniques of structured analysis) to do it or they hire a consultancy who use senior people to bid for the contract but then send graduate trainees in to do the work.

And yet another is people’s misconception of what a COTS product is. Customisable Off the Shelf should mean that you can install it “out of the box” and it will work straight away, although you can configure it to suits some of your specific needs. An example would be an internet security suite. Some so-called COTS products are no such thing – they are in fact development tools with customisable, re-usable components already built. But you cannot install them and have some end use immediately.

Regards,

Declan

Product managers are the people who work with their own designers and engineers to craft the COTS products. Having worked on that side of the COTS business, I can appreciate the frustration of trying to create a product that meets the needs of all the people in their customer base. Also having worked on that side for many years, I have witnessed a number of times that customers really didn’t understand what they wanted. Many times I watched people from the same company on the other side of the table from me argue amongst themselves which implementation of a particular feature was correct or right for their company.

So…how does this impact the COTS debate? My answer is this:

There is no substitute for good business analysis on both sides of the COTS negotiation table.