Software Processes for Electronic Commerce Portal Systems

The development of electronic commerce (EC) systems is subject to different conditions than that of conventional software systems. Examples of such differentiating conditions are that the development requires the integration of many systems from various suppliers and that content and functionality have to be coordinated closely. In addition, the roles involved in the development process, their tasks, qualifications and the software tools used by them, are different to other processes. An adapted process must cope with important idiosyncrasies of EC system development: EC systems typically have a high degree of interaction, which makes factors like ergonomics, didactics and psychology especially important in the development of user interfaces. Furthermore, the approach to the development of EC systems should take into account the "time-to-market" factor and allow development time reduction while retaining quality. This paper introduces and describes an adapted software development process for EC systems and its special features using the development of an EC portal system as an example.