Off-The-Shelf IT Solutions: A practitioner's guide to selection and procurement

The articles, templates, diagrams, books and training that feature in these Extra pages are complementary to our book, Off the Shelf IT Solutions. Author Martin Tate has made them freely available to download, subject to the website terms and conditions of our publisher BCS, the Chartered Institute for IT.

Book details

Off-The-Shelf IT Solutions: A practitioner's guide to selection and procurement on BCS bookstoreCover - Off-The-Shelf IT Solutions: A practitioner's guide to selection and procurement

This practical book presents a proven decision-making process to help IT and business managers select the off-the-shelf software product that best fits the needs of their organisation. Suitable for all sectors, it offers a structured approach to managing decision-making, stakeholders, requirements, expectations, technology, candidate IT vendors and contracts.

See BCS listing for details of the book, author biog, table of contents and reviews.

Tate, M. (2015) Off-The-Shelf IT Solutions: A practitioner’s guide to selection and procurement. BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT: Swindon.

ISBN: 9781780172583

Overview (with mapping to chapters)

This method diagram is in the introduction to the book. It provides a handy roadmap to the approach and therefore the associated templates below - note the chapter numbers linking steps to the list of templates.

Overview of approach - OTSIS selection method

Extras

The articles cover wrap-around issues, the templates provide live formats as explained in the book and the other information leads to tools for this type of project. 

• Articles (topics supporting the book's main approach)
  
  
• Templates for stage: Authorise project (Chapter 3)
  
  
• Templates for stage: Requirement definition (Chapters 4-5)
  
  
• Templates for stage: Evaluation and selection - longlist (Chapters 6-7)
  
  
• Templates for stage: Evaluation and selection - shortlist (Chapters 8-11)
  
  
• Templates for stage: Negotiation and contract (Chapter 12)
  
  
• Checklists (Chapter 14 and appendices)
  
  
• Further information (Training and reading)