One of the challenges of using COTS is defining which requirements and business processes can be supported with COTS products
while limiting the amount of customization and integration code that is required. Limiting customization and integration code
reduces risks, lowers maintenance costs, improves ability to upgrade and provides the customer more for their investment.
To help customers better understand their requirements and reduce COTS customization, SAIC successfully used storyboards during
the requirements phase. The storyboard process integrates “use cases” and screen captures to assist the customers in verifying
and adapting their requirements to the capabilities inherent in the COTS products. An additional bonus of this process is
that the screen captures also support the design phase of the user interface features. The storyboard process described in
this paper was used to develop large COTS-based systems for customers who historically developed large custom software applications.