Tailor made software and Off the shelf software

Tailor-made software (Custom software / Bespoke software) and Off-the-shelf software

Tailor-Made Software (Custom Software/Bespoke Software)

Tailor made software is specifically developed to meet the unique needs and requirements of a particular business or organization. It is built using variety of programming languages, frameworks and tools from scratch or heavily customized to fit the specific workflows, processes, and goals of the company.

Off-the-Shelf Software (Standard Software)

It is also known as commercial off-the-shelf (COTS). Off the shelf software is developed and pre-packaged by a vendor to address the needs of a broad audience or market segment. It comes with set of generic feature and templates and  ready to use and can be purchased or downloaded directly.

Factor	Tailor-Made Software	Off-the-Shelf Software
Customisation	High, fully tailored to needs	Limited customisation
Cost	High upfront cost, ongoing maintenance	Lower upfront cost, subscription/license fee
Time to Implement	Longer, months or more	Shorter, days or weeks
Scalability	High, adaptable to growth	Moderate, but may require additional tools
Maintenance and Support	In-house or outsourced may need internal team	Vendor-provided support but generic
Security	Can be custom-designed for specific needs	Vendor-managed, may face broad security risks
Functionality	Exactly what you need	May not fit all needs, some compromises
User Experience	Custom UX/UI for your users	Generic UX/UI
Updates & Upgrades	Managed internally, flexibility	Regular vendor updates, may lack flexibility
Risk	High development risk, but high reward	Lower risk, but potential limitations
Vendor Dependency	Low, unless outsourcing maintenance	High, dependent on vendor
Compliance	Tailored to compliance needs	May require modifications for specific needs

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Past Paper Questions on COTS to try

Your school plans to use an online system to provide extended learner support to A/L and O/L students during school holidays, weekends and other times that the school is not open. It is decided to use a suitable Commercial-Off-The-Shelf (COTS) software for this need. Your team has been requested to help with this project.

1. Some of your project team members argue that since COTS software are to be used there is no need of requirements analysis. List three most significant reasons to explain why you must complete requirement analysis even in this project. Note: Your answer must be specific to a project with COTS software use. Generic answers will not be accepted.
2. Following are part of the requirements identified for the above project. Identify and write down the labels (A-G) of all the functional requirements within the list.
1. Teaching material and learning content upload to the system shall only be allowed to the teachers assigned to that particular learning session.
2. The system shall be available for user access at least 99.9% of the time
3. The access history for each student's learning activity participation or content use within a course must be maintained as a report to be accessed by the subject teacher.
4. The system should be easy to work with after 1 hour of training
5. At the end of each learning session, the student must be provided with an option to ask question from the teacher.
6. The system should respond to any user request within 2000ms.
7. The system should be able to serve a minimum of 200 concurrent users at a given time.
3. What is the most appropriate testing strategy for your team to evaluate the selected COTS software system for the identified requirements?