Improving COTS-based Software Development Process by Identification and Mitigation of Component Risks

It is very clear that the as the demand of software industry is increasing day by day in every field, the cost of software is also rising very rapidly. In the recent time there is a burden in the IT industry to fulfilling the user expectations with feasible development cost that can provide quality product. So to reduce the complexities of existing system a new strategy developed in software engineering, a component based approach. Component based development (either as COTS components or OSS) aims at developing software by using the existing software components. Time & Cost saving are the main factors to adopt the COTS based approach. This approach improves the software crisis at great level. Because the purpose behind COTS based approach is to develop large systems, by incorporating existing developed components that cut down development time and costs. But the reality of this approach is little different as there are number of problems & risks in components during every development phase. COTS based development approach is still facing many challenges as limited access to internal design due to black box nature of it. The objective of this paper is to provide a theoretical study for the identification of risks during commercial off-the-shelf development life cycle & mitigation guidelines to manage these risks.