Software procurement

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Software procurement (Engl. Software acquisition ), and software acquisition , stands for the procurement of software and doing necessary measures. It is a sub-area of software technology , or more precisely IT resource management . Part of the task is to determine which required software parts are already available on the market, i.e. which can be procured ( standard software ), and which must first be developed in-house ( individual software ).

Process and methodology of software procurement

The acquisition of software often requires high investment costs. It is often a measure for the implementation of strategic decisions, for example with significant changes to company processes. A structured, rational and systematic approach to the selection of standard software is therefore necessary and serves to avoid high expenditure in terms of time and money (e.g. for the subsequent development of missing functions). This requires a clear presentation of the advantages and disadvantages of the individual solutions, especially if or because there are usually several alternatives in the form of competing software systems.

While the requirements are determined and taken into account in the framework of requirements management in the individual development of software , when software is acquired (through purchase or licensing), the usually already finished software must be evaluated in the context of a systematic decision-making process. Such selection projects can be carried out with the implementation of a benefit analysis , also called scoring. It is not about inventing possible alternatives, but about finding solutions offered on the market.

Numerous companies offer their services to support the procurement and selection of software.

Depending on the importance, scope and area of ​​application of the software to be purchased, the task of software acquisition can be relatively simple (for example, in the case of software for a narrowly defined, possibly only personal functional area or group of users ), has to involve several participants or even has to be set up as a large project (e.g. for software decisions for central functional areas in a large company).

Procedural models

There are different procedural models that deal with the procurement of software:

  • The CMM maturity model provides reference processes that are used to assess and improve the quality ("maturity") of company processes. Software acquisition is listed under the abbreviation SA-CMM ( Software Acquisition Capability Maturity Model ) and describes software procurement as a special case of procurement processes. CMM was supplemented by CMMI at the end of 2003 . In the CMMI reference models, product acquisition ( acquisition ) is generally dealt with in the CMMI-ACQ process area, in which the former SA-CMM process area has merged. The reference processes are divided into the process stages Acquisition Planning , RFP preparing (prepare offer), Solicitation (obtain offer), Source Selection (offer comparison), Program Leadership (Insight, Oversight) (project management), System Acceptance (system test) and Transition (transfer) .
  • The COBIT reference processes lead the procurement process for software under the designation "BE2 procurement and maintenance of application software". Various control objectives , including AI5.4 Software Acquisition, are summarized there.
  • ISO 12207 (a standard for software lifecycle processes) describes acquisition as one of the “five primary processes” that are related to the organizational processes and the supporting processes.
  • The encyclopedia of business informatics describes a phase model for the selection of software with the stages “goals”, “process analysis”, “requirements”, “market overview”, “screening”, “final selection” and “decision”.
  • In a work report from the University of Münster, several projects for the selection of standard software were examined and the process models used in each case were compared.

Selection criteria

In addition to the decision-making process, in which the procedure for a specific decision-making situation is determined, the decision is mainly determined by the requirements that are individually tailored to the application . These are defined as criteria (relevant features for the description of a software system) and, weighted according to their importance and, if necessary, combined into groups of criteria, form the basis for the assessment / decision.

When selecting software - as an essential part of software procurement - for a business environment, the following requirements / criteria can be used as a basis:

Functional requirements:

  • Functionality that is supported by the software (including level of detail)
  • Data that the software can manage / process: objects and their relationships to one another, attributes and their characteristics
  • Interactive editing functions of the software
  • Evaluations that the software offers

IT technical requirements:

  • Ability to integrate into the existing IT landscape: e.g. internet-compatible, possible operating systems, DBMS, etc.
  • Performance / IT load
  • Ease of installation and configuration

Architecture requirements:

  • Usability / ergonomics / help system
  • Security: ensuring controlled access, administration of rights, four-eyes principle, ...
  • Multi-client capability , multilingualism
  • Versioning functions and historical view of the data
  • Interfaces to and from other software packages and system software
  • Flexibility, individual adaptability, e.g. B. via a parameter system
  • Possibility to create additional, individual evaluations

Other criteria:

  • Costs (e.g. using a total cost of ownership (TCO) assessment)
  • Manufacturer (awareness, reliability)
  • Dissemination of the software
  • Software solution life cycle
  • Implementation support from the manufacturer
  • Support: update frequency, response time in the event of software errors

See also

literature

Web links

  • SEI : CMMI for Acquisition, Version 1.3: PDF

Individual evidence

  1. ^ TU Clausthal, Computer Science courses ( Memento of the original from May 5, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.in.tu-clausthal.de
  2. ↑ a b c d e f Jens Wiese: A decision model for the selection of standard application software using the example of merchandise management systems. (PDF; 230 kB) Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, Institute for Information Systems, March 1998, accessed on September 5, 2018 .
  3. ↑ a b Oldenbourg Encyclopedia of Business Information Systems: Software selection [1]
  4. ↑ a b Kneuper publications CMMI-ACQ ( PDF )
  5. ↑ IT AUDIT GmbH (ITGI) Announcement Version 4.1 of COBIT Archived copy ( Memento of the original from May 14, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.it-audit.com
  6. ↑ University of Bremen correspondence of the V-model to ISO 12207 [2]