Component Developer Issues

A Component Developer implements and ships components to his customers, the component users. These component users may be end-users, i.e. Project Coordinators , System Architects , and Component Assemblers . The corresponding process model for a Component Developer is rather similar to the process model for component users, as described in Figure 1:

A Component Developer does also receive requirements from his customers, although these requirements are specifications which are usually more formal than the requirements provided by end-users. The Component Developer screens his stock for a component which suits the customer's requirements. In some cases an existing component merely has to be adapted during the corresponding design and implementation tasks. The resulting development process is rather fast and the component can soon be delivered.

In other cases, the Component Developer has no suitable component in stock, and consequently performs a complete development process as described in the previous section. During Analysis, the Component Developer should consider customer requirements from a more abstract point of view in order to develop components that may also be (re)used in a different context by different customers. Therefore, a special marketing department should perform an according market study.

During Business Design and Technical Design the Component Developer specifies the component architecture. Possibly, a combination of smaller components within this architecture already fulfills the given requirements. Otherwise, the Component Developer has to design and implement the component from scratch. Subsequently, the developed component is tested against the more abstract requirements provided by the market study. Finally, the Component Developer will adapt the component, test it against the original requirements provided by the original customer, and deliver it after a successful test.