TITLE:
Computer Aided Call for Tenders: A Tool for Software Bidding
AUTHORS:
Jorge Hochstetter, Carlos Cares
KEYWORDS:
Call for Tenders, Software Bidding, Requirements Specifications, Software Outsourcing
JOURNAL NAME:
Journal of Software Engineering and Applications,
Vol.7 No.7,
June
11,
2014
ABSTRACT: Under a broad comprehension of
Software Engineering, it is preferred the term software life cycle instead of
just software production. The reason is that cycle starts at software conception
and stops when the software is relegated. Given contemporary companies’ market
strategies of focusing on their competitive advantages, most of them have
externalized their software production to outsourced services. Therefore, the
call for software tenders has become a common step in the software life cycle.
In this paper, we present a tool which aids non-experts to specify call for
software tenders. The motivation was Chile situation of most of rural and
semi-urban city halls which do not have engineering teams to build call for
software tenders. We describe the problem in terms of lack of competitiveness
and empty biddings generated by low quality calls for tenders. As a second
step, we show the technical considerations to develop the proposed tool and its
features. We include an initial tool perception from a first group of users.