Seeking meaningful measures for COTS-intensive system development

Increasingly, large and complex government acquisitions, including critical aerospace systems, make use of Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) hardware and software products. Managing and tracking such projects are especially challenging because there is little guidance available on what to measure to adequately understand the progress and quality of the development of COTS-intensive software components while the system is being developed. Taking clues for COTS estimation and COTS acquisition measurement research together with experiences on a large ground space communications system, this paper reports on our experience in implementing a measurement program to manage software development activities of a COTS-intensive system in an Aerospace domain-focusing mainly on the aspect of managing the COTS development