W-Shaped Framework for Component Selection and Product Development Process

The IT industry started software development by using software components to reduce the efforts, the cost of the product and enhance the productivity and quality of the product. The quality and cost of a software product are highly dependent on the quality and cost of the components assembled to produce the product. There exist a variety of parameters for component selection such as usability, maintainability, reliability, security, functionality, cost of customization and integration. Hence, component selection is a critical, search driven and NP-hard problem. For a better component selection different component selection meta-models are available. Context Driven Component Selection (CDCS) provides a better way to evaluate different characteristics of a software component which is important for component selection from the developer's point of view. There is a strong need to devise a component selection model and strategy to fulfill the needs of industry. In this paper we propose the W-Shaped model for component selection. This paper provides insight into the steps required for component selection and product development process. It helps the developers to systematically manage, customize and updating of different software components.