off-the-shelf-software

How does off-the-shelf software fit in with agile development?

Maybe my understanding of agile development isn't as good as it should be, but I'm curious how an agile developer would potentially use off-the-shelf (OTS) software when the requirements and knowledge of what the final system should be are changing as rapidly as I understand them to (often after each iteration of development). I see t...

What percentage of software developers write custom/bespoke software?

What percentage of software developers are involved in the creation of custom/bespoke software? This should include both employees of companies with in-house development shops and freelance web developers, consultants, etc. (Basically everything excluding the folks who write the "shrink-wrapped" stuff.) NOTE: This is for research purp...

Buy or build tool for Data Reporting ?

We have been asked to provide a data reporting solution. The followng are the requirements: i. The client has a lot of data which is generated everyday as an outcome of the tests they run. These tests are run at several sites and they get automatically backed up into a central server. ii. They already have perl scripts which post proce...

How to decide: build from scratch or reverse engineer off the shelf solution

Let's say someone asked me to build them a youtube clone with a lot of customizations to support a whole bunch of wacky things they want to do. How do I decide if it's better for me to build from scratch vs. build off a white label or open source product? Because of my past work experience, I am biased to build from scratch because the...

software to manage applications within business.

Hi I have been tasked to either find an off the shelf solution or to build inhouse some software that can maintain a list of all of the applications within our business, assign them to the different business areas that use them and list all the servers, documents, knowledge base etc that relate to the app in question. Does anyone know ...

Off the shelf or roll my own?

I want to take an Anroid based tablet - not a phone, I need a large screen and I don't need 3G. The guy with the tablet will attach a web cam to it and a s/w application in the Adnroid tablet will stream the cameras feed to a web page (there may later be a need to stream video back to the Android tablet - tbd). Additionally, I need 2 w...

Designing library performance comparison tests

I am getting ready to perform a series of performance comparisons of various of the shelf products. What do I need to do to show credibility in the tests? How do I design my benchmark tests so that they are respectable? I am also interested in any suggestions on the actual design of the tests. Ways to load data without effecting th...