What I learned about COTS requirements while searching for a wedding dress

Over the past week and a half, I’ve been to 4 dress shops and tried on at least 50 wedding dresses. Being in the position of unenlightened consumer, working my way through a purchase I have never made before and will never (knock on wood) make again, and really not sure what I wanted but confident I had a real need, I learned a few things about the requirements process for purchasing COTS (commercial-off-the-shelf-solutions) from a different perspective.

Start by evaluation the COTS options

When you don’t know what you want, explore what’s available. I walked into my first shop saying, “I have no idea, I just don’t think I want something too poofy.”  Through the process of exploring what was available, trying many different dresses on with an open mind, and breaking each dress into the parts I liked vs. the parts I didn’t, I was able to go into the fourth shop and say, “what I really want is X, Y, and Z.” (X, Y, and Z are very specific features that I just can’t share in case my fiancee is reading this.)  The plethora of COTS and open source tools really makes shopping around possible in almost any situation.  Taking some time to explore will open your eyes to what’s possible and uncover unstated expectations.

Few software packages are worth customizing

Limit customizations. In my second shop, every dress was perfect “except” where “except” meant a host of alterations.  Because the dresses were so reasonably priced, we spent a lot of time and energy figuring out how each dress could be customized to look good on me.  This was probably productive in terms of finding my real “requirements” but it was the more complicated way to achieve the end-goal.  The dress I chose to buy will need little in terms of alterations and this greatly simplifies things as we near “the big day”.  This concept is especially relevant today as there are an increasing number of options available when exploring for tools.  Force yourself to take some extra time to find software that fits your needs out-of-the-box.  You will save dividends in terms of time, energy, and overall maintenance costs.

Balance a quick decision with the right COTS choice

Don’t compromise (too much) or decide too quickly. For the better part of a week, I hung onto a “second-best” dress.  I didn’t yet know what it was second-best to, but I was ready to compromise simply because I valued a quick decision and less shopping.  I was lucky, one additional shopping trip uncovered the perfect dress. Through this small amount of perseverance, I ended up with a more reasonably price dress that was exactly what I wanted.  Building on the point above, sometimes the best decision is to keep looking for a perfect fit instead of throwing key features out the door.  It can help to time box your extended search and visualize your world should you choose to compromise. Can you live with it?

By Laura Brandenburg. Laura Brandenburg is an independent business analyst consultant. She is passionate about the BA profession and is committed to contributing by supporting this blog as a forum for business analysts to build on each other's experiences. View more blog posts by Laura Brandenburg

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