Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
weapon to use in battle at very short range… Too far
from the opponent and it is too difficult to say that your
position has an effect.
is the right distance from
the opponent for attacking or defending.”
Such thinking has relevance in business strategies,
especially when it comes to vendors, as well as partners
and competitors. One wants to maintain the right
Ma-ai
distance.
Preparing to Buy
When getting ready to buy OTS products, consider the following:
Separate wants and needs. Divide requirements into Essential and
Nice-to-Have. Also, qualify Essentials - essential for what?
Avoid requirements that are vague; you may get a bad fit. Ensure
that your requirements have the required
. (We use variety
as defined by Ashby and discussed in Chapter 2).
variety
Gather requirements from a cross section of users. The success of
the implementation will depend on the users' ability to use it in
their environment.
require-
ments. It may prevent you from looking into features within the
package that could be useful if you knew what they were or how
they could be used.
However, do not drive the acquisition only through
your
Remember that success depends not only on the base product, but
also on its implementation. Neither one will stand alone.
Expect resistance to change, especially when users are comfortable
with the systems they are currently using (Figure 9.1).
Also consider who within the vendor's organization knows these OTS
products. The candidates include:
. They each know certain
aspects: the internals, the APIs (application programming inter-
faces), the scaffolding, and the “piping.” For a complex product,
only a few may know the entire piping anyway.
The engineers who built the products
