Patent Document ID: 9710838
Application ID: 14041472
Patent Flag: 1

Claim One:
1. A method comprising: selecting a plurality of features to include within a predictive build of a computing system, the computing system comprising a server computing device having a plurality of hardware components arranged in a particular configuration, the features comprising the hardware components in the particular configuration, the predictive build being an anticipated final build of the computing system prior to receiving a firm customer order for the computing system in accordance with which an actual final build of the computing system is then built; estimating a marginal cost of first building the predictive build and then modifying the predictive build to realize the actual final build, as compared to building the actual final build without first building the predictive build and then modifying predictive build to realize the actual final build, based on the features selected; responsive to determining that the marginal cost is less than a predetermined acceptable marginal cost limit, performing: prior to receiving the firm customer order, building the computing system in accordance with the predictive build thereof, the computing system including the selected features of the predictive build; testing the computing system as has been built in accordance with the predictive build thereof; receiving the firm customer order; after receiving the firm customer order, modifying the computing system as built in accordance with the predictive build thereof, the computing system modified according to the received firm customer order, to realize the actual final build; and after modifying the computing system, testing the computing system as has been modified according to the received firm customer order; responsive to determining that the marginal cost is greater than the predetermined acceptable marginal cost limit, performing: refraining from building the predictive build prior to receiving the firm customer order; receiving the firm customer order; after receiving the firm customer order, modifying the predictive build according to the received firm customer order to realize the actual final build; after modifying the predictive build, building the computing system in accordance with the actual final build of the computing system without first causing the computing system to be built in accordance with the predictive build; testing the computing system as has been built in accordance with the actual final build thereof, wherein estimating the marginal cost comprises: adding together a marginal cost value for each feature to realize the marginal cost of first building the predictive build and then modifying the predictive build to realize the actual final build, wherein the marginal cost value for each feature, as the given feature, is equal to the marginal cost of including the given feature within the predictive build multiplied by a number of the instances of the given feature to be included within the predictive build, wherein the number of instances of the given feature to be included within the predictive build is selected as a sum of a mean of a distribution of the given feature within past customer orders of the computing system and a predetermined value, the distribution indicating how often the given potential feature was present within the past customer orders.