Challenges for agile development of COTS components and COTS-based systems - A theoretical examination

Component-based software engineering has had great impact in the desktop and server domain and is spreading to other domains as well, such as embedded systems. Agile software development is another approach which has gained much attention in recent years, mainly for smaller-scale production of less critical systems. Both of them promise to increase system quality, development speed and flexibility, but so far little has been published on the combination of the two approaches. This paper presents a comprehensive analysis of the applicability of the agile approach in the development processes of 1) COTS components and 2) COTS-based systems. The study method is a systematic theoretical examination and comparison of the fundamental concepts and characteristics of these approaches. The contributions are: first, an enumeration of identified contradictions between the approaches, and suggestions how to bridge these incompatibilities to some extent. Second, the paper provides some more general comments, considerations, and application guidelines concerning the introduction of agile principles into the development of COTS components or COTS-based systems. This study thus forms a framework which will guide further empirical studies.