Don't make a mess of software subcontracting! On MASS: A method for subcontractor selection in software application development

As the amount of software in today's products increases also the need for subcontracting assessment arises. Frequently questions are posed like: 'What is the quality of my subcontractor? Or, is this company able to produce part(s) of our software?'. Although, posing the question is easy, answering it is confronted the problem: 'How to assess the supposed subcontractor while its product does not exist yet?' A range of assessment methods has been defined over the years as the result of in-house as well as public standardization projects. In this paper the authors analyse these existing methods and propose a ´best-off´ approach: the so-called MASS: Method for Assessing Software Subcontractors.