  Small to medium sized business enterprises (SMEs) generally thrive because
they have successfully done something unique within a niche market. For this
reason, SMEs may seek to protect their competitive advantage by avoiding any
standardization encouraged by the use of packaged software (PS). Packaged
software implementation at SMEs therefore presents challenges relating to how
best to respond to misfits between the functionality offered by the packaged
software and each SME's business needs. An important question relates to which
processes small software enterprises - or Small to Medium-Sized Software
Development Companies (SMSSDCs) - apply in order to identify and then deal with
these misfits. To explore the processes of packaged software (PS)
implementation, an ethnographic study was conducted to gain in-depth insights
into the roles played by analysts in two SMSSDCs. The purpose of the study was
to understand PS implementation in terms of requirements engineering (or
'PSIRE'). Data collected during the ethnographic study were analyzed using an
inductive approach. Based on our analysis of the cases we constructed a
theoretical model explaining the requirements engineering process for PS
implementation, and named it the PSIRE Parallel Star Model. The Parallel Star
Model shows that during PSIRE, more than one RE process can be carried out at
the same time. The Parallel Star Model has few constraints, because not only
can processes be carried out in parallel, but they do not always have to be
followed in a particular order. This paper therefore offers a novel
investigation and explanation of RE practices for packaged software
implementation, approaching the phenomenon from the viewpoint of the analysts,
and offers the first extensive study of packaged software implementation RE
(PSIRE) in SMSSDCs.
