Assure Completeness of Needs Requirements

This step determines whether you have adequately defined your requirements. Your requirements should be defined in terms of the following two categories of outputs:

1. Output Products and Output Reports -Output products and output reports are specific documents that you want produced by the computer system. In many instances, such as the previous payroll check example, the style and format of these output products is important. This does not mean that the specific location of the check has to be defined but, rather, the categories of information to be included on the check. Computer-produced reports may also be important for tax information (e.g., employee withholding forms sent to governmental units), financial statements where specific statements are wanted (e.g., balance sheets or statements of income and expense), or customer invoice and billing forms which you might want preprinted to include your logo and conditions of payment.

2.Management decision information. This category tries to define the information needed for decision-making purposes. In the computer product/report category you were looking for a document; in this case you are looking for information. How that information is provided is unimportant. Thus, the structure of the document, what the documents are, or their size, frequency, or volume are not significant. All you need is information.

Define Critical Success Factor

This step tells whether the COTS software will be successful in meeting your requirements. Critical success factors (CSFs) are those criteria or factors that must be present in the acquired software for it to be successful. You might ask whether the needs are the same as the critical success factors. They are, but they are not defined in a manner that makes them testable, and they may be incomplete. Often the needs do not take into account some of the intangible criteria that make the difference between success and failure. In other words, the needs define what we are looking for, and the critical success factors tell us how we will evaluate that product after we get it. They are closely related and complementary, but different in scope and purpose.

The following list indicates the needs or requirements for the automobile, and is then followed by the CSFs on which the automobile will be evaluated:

Seats six people

Four doors

Five-year guarantee on motor

Gets 20 miles per gallon or greater

Costs under $12,000

Critical success factors:

Operates at 20.5 cents or less per mile

Experiences no more than one failure per year

Maintains its appearance without showing signs of wear for two years

Some of the more common critical success factors for COTS you may want to use are:

Ease of use - The software is understandable and usable by the average person.

Expandability - The contractor plans to add additional features in the future.

Maintainability - The contractor will provide support/assistance to help utilize the package in the event of problems.

Cost-effectiveness - The software package makes money for your business by reducing costs, and so on.

Transferability - If you change your computer equipment the contractor indicates that they will support new models or hardware.

Reliability - In computer language, the system is friendly, meaning that it will help you get your transactions entered into the system so that you can produce your results readily.

Security - The system has adequate safeguards to protect the data against damage (for example, power failures, operator errors, or other goofs that could cause you to lose your data).

Determine Compatibility with Hardware, Operating System, and Other COTS Software

This is not a complex step. It involves a simple matching between your processing capabilities and limitations, and what the contractor of the software says is necessary to run the software package. The most difficult part of this evaluation is ensuring the multiple software packages can properly interface.

This step is best performed by preparing a checklist defining your compatibility needs. Software contractors are generally good about identifying the needed hardware and operating system compatibility. They are generally not good in identifying compatibility with other software packages.