ORIGINAL ARTICLE Sensitivity analysis in the process of COTS mismatch-handling

Abstract During the selection of commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) products, mismatches encountered between stakeholders ’ requirements and features offered by COTS products are inevitable. These mismatches occur as a result of an excess or shortage of functionality offered by the COTS. A decision support approach, called mismatch handling for COTS selection (MiHOS), was proposed earlier to help address mismatches while considering lim-ited resources. In MiHOS, several input parameters need to be estimated such as the level of mismatches and the resource consumptions and constraints. These estimates are subject to uncertainty and therefore limit the applicability of the results. In this paper, we propose sensitivity analysis for MiHOS (MiHOS-SA), an approach that aims at helping decision makers gain insights into the impact of input uncertainties on the validity of MiHOS ’ results. MiHOS-SA draws on existing sensitivity analysis techniques to address the problem. A case study from the e-services domain was conducted to illustrate MiHOS-SA and discuss its added value