Decision support systems

Abstract

Commercial-Off-The-Shelf (COTS)-Based Software Development (CBSD) has the potential to reduce time and resources required to develop software. However, In order to realize the benefits, which COTS bring to software development, it is imperative that the “right” COTS products are selected for projects, because selecting inappropriate COTS products may result in increasing time and cost of software development; which CBSD aims at reducing. COTS selection is a major challenge to COTS-based software developers, due to the multiplicity of similar COTS products on the market with varying capabilities and quality differences. Moreover, COTS selection is a complex decision-making problem that is characterized by the following: uncertainty, multiple stakeholders, and multiple selection objectives. Therefore, the process of selecting COTS products requires addressing multiple challenges, which in turn necessitates using multiple Decision Support Applications (DSA) as well as multiple information repositories. This paper describes an agent-based Decision Support System (DSS), which integrates various COTS selection DSA and repositories to address a variety of COTS selection challenges. Besides managing the COTS selection DSA and repositories, the agents are used to support communication and information sharing among the COTS selection stakeholders.