A Six Sigma-Based Process to Improve COTS Component Filtering

specification of a component C, a set of components K relevant to C and called candidate solution SO, and a set of pre-selected components from SO, called solution SN. Sc(i) represents the map associated to the input value i defined in the domain of Sc. This map should provide a valid value on the output domain of Sc, i.e. there is no empty maps or invalid associations. A similar assumption is made on the mappings of SK. Then, the solution in which all components potentially contribute with some functionality to get the requirements of C is called here SN. Table 1 lists our suite of functional suitability measures, which are classified into two groups: component-level measures and solution-level measures. For example, CFC measures the number of functional mappings provided by Sk and required by Sc in the scenario S; SNCF measures the number of components that contribute with compatible functionality to get the requirements of Sc in the scenario S; and so forth. We refer the reader to Cechich and Piattini (2004c) for a more formal definition of the metrics. JRPIT 39.4.QXP 14/9/07 10:11 AM Page 255