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Building COTS solutions using EPIC
The Carnegie Mellon Software Engineering Institute published in 2002 the Evolutionary Process for Integrating COTS-based systems (EPIC). The process is described in a 275 pages free to download paper.
The EPIC is meant as a guideline for building systems based on Commercial Off The Shelf (COTS) components. The guideline describes the steps to be taken to create systems starting from four "spheres of influence". These spheres are:
- Stakeholder needs and business processes (requirements)
- Marketplace (what COTS technology is available)
- Architecture and Design (general setup of the system)
- Programmatic and risks (the management of the project)
The EPIC described a process to have these spheres overlap as much as possible creating a coherent system based on the Rational Unified Process (RUP). In the Inception and Elaboration phases the system is designed by accumulating knowledge about the four spheres leading to increased stakeholder buy-in.
The EPIC describes the steps to be taken to create a system, but I found the last part of the document (section C) the most interesting. In this section guidelines and artifacts are presented that can be used as checklists when actually creating systems. It presents for instance a market survey checklist describing the steps and questions one could ask to market parties about their COTS products and component screening criteria to evaluate COTS components. It even includes business process change management guidelines to check the readiness of the organization to work with COTS based solutions.
I found the EPIC very useful indeed and recommend it to anyone creating systems based on COTS products.
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