Friday, September 5, 2003

Meeting Topic:

Process Principles for COTS-Based Systems

Presenter: Tricia Oberndorf

Abstract

Industry and government organizations are escalating their use of commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) products in support of business and mission critical applications. However, project managers who want to exploit the benefits promised by the use of COTS products are finding that traditional requirements-driven processes don’t work. At the same time, many organizations have derived substantial benefits through process improvement using Capability Maturity Models (CMM®s) and want to leverage previous investments in process improvement to build COTS-based systems.

This presentation reveals the framework for an effective COTS-based system process, called the Assembly/Acquisition Process for COTS-based Systems (A/APCS, pronounced “apex”), that has resulted from extensive work with real programs, mostly in the DoD. Then it addresses the question, "How should the CMMI be interpreted for organizations building, fielding, and supporting a COTS-based system?" by providing high-level guidance on interpreting and using CMMI practices in a way that facilitates the definition and development of appropriate processes for COTS-based systems.

® Capability Maturity Model, CMM, and CMMI are registered at the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office by Carnegie Mellon University.

Meeting Coordinator: George Huling, g.huling@alumni.duke.edu

Your Presenter: Tricia Oberndorf is Director of the Dynamic Systems Program at the Software Engineering Institute (SEI). She has been a principal of the COTS-Based Systems Initiative and concentrates on the investigation of issues in integration and acquisition of systems from commercial and other off-the-shelf components. She is co-author of the book entitled “Managing Software Acquisition: Open Systems and COTS Products.” She has spent much of her career in the investigation of a number of other integration and open systems questions, in the context of computer-aided software engineering environments and other kinds of systems. Prior to coming to the SEI, she was with the Navy for more than 19 years.

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