COSI Overview

During the last years, a change in the development process of complex software has been observed. As a consequence of the commodification of software, a large part of the software is not product specific any more. The shifts in development are as follows:

Shift from in-house development towards subcontracting and integration,
Shift towards coalitions (e.g. open platforms)
Shift towards collaboration with open source development communities

These are all forms of network-enabled collaboration, i.e. software is not produced by a single group, but in a close cooperation spread over a company and beyond the company’s borders. For the development of software intensive systems the first two shifts are increasingly visible. However, this does not yet hold for the third shift. Despite the pressure originating from different sources to explore, and possibly adopt open source and/or open source methodology in software intensive systems, the advantages and drawbacks of integrating open source software and its methodology in software intensive systems are not well understood.

For most products, only a small part (5 to 10 percent) of the software is differentiating. This small part provides the added value over the competitors. The remainder is more or less common to the domain, or even across different domains; i.e. it is more or less a commodity. Effective and efficient software development only focuses on producing the differentiating parts. The commodity software is preferably to be acquired elsewhere, involving distributed development and external software such as commercial of the shelf (COTS) or open source software

showing a picture

Figure 1: Efficient and effective development

Figure 1 shows, in product-based business models, the landscape of technology versus business decisions on making or acquiring software. There are two corner areas to be avoided in producing technology. The lower left corner has to be avoided in order to save on development costs, since commodity technology can be obtained cheaper by buying it instead of making it. The upper right corner should be avoided at any cost, because it would mean passing the own added value to competitors. Healthy software development is characterised by the middle area, from top-left to bottom-right. Differentiating software is developed within the organisation (top left corner). Commodity software is bought at the market or even available at no costs (open source software).

Further reading: GeneralGoals and TechnicalAndStrategicRelevance.

Open source an productline workshops:

OSSPL07 Limerick: OssPl07
OSSPL07 Asia Kyoto: OssPlas07
OSSPL08 Limerick: OssPl08

Following all the pages in COSI wiki:

C
CalibrationForum: Calibration Forum
CalibrationMembership: Calibration Membership
CalibrationModusOperandi: Calibration Modus Operandi
CalibrationTopics: Issues addressed by Calibration
CoSiris: Cosiris

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GeneralGoals: General Goals

O
OssPl07: OSSPL07
OssPl08:
OssPlas07: OSSPL07 Asia

P
ProgressReportAndPublications: Publications
ProjectContacts: Project Contacts
ProjectDeliverables: Project Deliverables
ProjectPartners: Project Partners
ProjectStatistics: COSI Statistics

R
RelatedLinks: Related links

T
TechnicalAndStrategicRelevance: Technical And Strategic Relevance

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WikiHome: COSI Overview

COSI is a project financially supported by the ProFIT program of Ministerio de Industria, Comercio y Turismo in Spain,Tekes in Finland, SenterNovem of Ministerie van Echnomische Zaken in the Netherlands, VINNOVA in Sweeden and The Research Council of Norway.