Customizable-Off-The-Shelf or Custom Development?
It’s a long-time dilemma for many organizations whether to devote resources to custom software application development or go for the commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) solution? In this blog post, we will highlight some main fundamental strategies that will help any GIS department choose what will best fit its user needs.
In short, the answer to this question also links us back to what the requirements are and what current infrastructure is. An application implementation strategy is an approach to delivering capabilities that meet your business needs with technology.
Gathering Requirements is crucial for the success of your application whether it's COTS or custom. You should closely work with the sponsor, stakeholders, users, and IT focusing on the requirements, not the solution. Types of the requirements you will have to gather are:
| High-level vision statements | (ex. Share information with the public) |
| What the application should do | (from a user perspective) |
| How the application does it | (usability, security, performance, etc.) |
Following the requirements, there are many other factors to consider when deciding the best way to deliver new capabilities through apps. These factors include resourcing, initial development effort, ongoing app maintenance, user training, and technical support. In addition, users now expect frequent updates to their apps, which increases demand for resources to develop and maintain custom apps. As a result, it’s best to select the approach that delivers the capabilities you need with the least cost and effort. An ideal strategy will minimize cost and optimize the use of development resources.
By applying a “configure first” philosophy that prioritizes commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) apps and least-effort design patterns, you can reduce the cost and effort needed to deploy and maintain applications for your users. Organizations that adopt a configure-first philosophy start by configuring COTS apps, then extend and customize apps only when needed. Using this least-effort approach in your application implementation strategy lets you deliver capabilities faster and reserve your development resources for more complex tasks.
Depending on your specific requirements, you can:
- Configure COTS apps to meet your business needs. ArcGIS provides many configurable COTS apps that support key workflows out of the box. Using COTS apps requires the least effort and the lowest ongoing cost. ArcGIS COTS Apps (Web App Builder, Story Maps, Operational Dashboards, Collector, GeoForm, and Survey 123)
- Extend existing apps, either by modifying templates or by creating widgets for COTS apps. Esri offers app templates at solutions.arcgis.com and github.com/esri that provide focused solutions for specific problems; you can modify the source code for these templates to add discrete capabilities. In addition, several ArcGIS COTS apps use modular frameworks that let you create custom widgets and plug them into the apps. Extending existing apps lets you develop only the additional functionality you need, saving money and effort.
- Customize apps using ArcGIS APIs and SDKs. These APIs and SDKs provide objects like the Identity Manager to manage credentials within custom apps that expose parts of the ArcGIS platform (such as secure web maps). Because you don’t have to code those parts yourself, you can build business-focused apps to take advantage of ArcGIS COTS capabilities, reducing the overhead for app development and maintenance. Check out developers.esri.com for more information on the wide selection of APIs and SDKs available.
In conclusion, to establish an effective application implementation strategy for your organization, look deep into your requirements and available resources, and try to follow these 3 simple guidelines:
- Adopt a configure-first philosophy, configuring COTS apps when possible to deliver the capabilities you need.
- If you have a requirement that cannot be met with configuration alone, extend existing apps with discrete capabilities and widgets.
- When you need capabilities that you can’t provide by configuring and extending existing apps, customize apps using ArcGIS APIs and SDKs.