Lessons Learned Integrating COTS into Systems

摘要

This paper presents lessons learned by the author over fifteen years of experience integrating COTS software into systems at The Boeing Company. One key lesson has been to distinguish development vs. customization vs. integration vs. configuration and understanding the corresponding impacts on tools, architectures, and even methodologies. Methodology impacts can destroy a project if they aren't recognized and mitigated in a timely manner. The paper walks through four COTS projects, discussing the challenges of each and how they were overcome. The COTS integration project involving a workflow engine provides an extreme example of methodology impact.