And as fast as the marketplace of products is changing, the marketplace of ideas is changing even faster. For this organization, and in the context of this system, there is a fundamental need for flexibility. Therefore, COTS evaluation for this organization is flavored accordingly. Thus, while individual products are assessed for their individual functionalities, they are assessed as much to see if they interoperate and cooperate with the other COTS components in the system. The planning for evaluation is generally not rigorous or exhaustive, since the expected lifetime of any specific product within the system is relatively short.
Planning is therefore opportunistic.
Given the number of COTS products used and the number of potential candidates, a careful, methodical approach is simply not feasible. Design the evaluation instrument . Apply the evaluation instrument . Assessing products is generally done through prototyping and through installation of the product into the existing system context. The evaluation process itself is as flexible as possible, and serendipity is not considered a bad thing.