Conceptual Fit: A Criterion for COTS Selection

COTS systems selection consists in evaluating the user requirements with respect to characteristics of candidate systems, using a set of criteria. One criterion that has received little attention is what we call conceptual fit. The criterion assesses the fit between the conceptual structure of the user requirements and that of a system. We evaluate the fit in terms of the existing misfits. We formally define the notion of conceptual misfit and we present a method that determines the conceptual misfits between the user requirements and a set of candidate systems. The method consists in defining a superschema, the mapping of the conceptual schemas of the candidate systems and of the user requirements to that superschema, and the automatic computation of the existing conceptual misfits. The method has been formalized in UML/OCL. We have conducted an exploratory experiment with the aim of evaluating the feasibility, difficulty and usefulness of the method, with positive results. We believe that the conceptual fit criterion could be taken into account by almost all existing COTS selection methods.