An exploratory study of the standard reuse practice in a medium sized software development firm

Abstract

Reuse has been a topic of interest in software engineering since 1968. Although many academic papers have been written about adopting software reuse in companies, such a process in practice has proven difficult, long and costly to implement. At present, rigorous studies on the current practice of reuse in industry are scarce. Objective: The aim of this paper was to study the current practice of software reuse at a medium sized company, in particular, we aimed to alleviate the lack of data and identify barriers and success factors. Method: An exploratory study based upon descriptive surveys. Results: The predominant practice of reuse is ad hoc (73%) and the reusable artefacts were shared by means of a central repository (81%). Most practitioners use the Web to look for artefacts (92%), trying to understand them by studying code snippets or the artefact's documentation. The existence of a well-established reuse process (81%) and a high quality of the artefacts (70%) were the two most mentioned facilitators for reuse. Conclusions: All participants view software reuse as a beneficial process and believe that management should promote it. The results offer opportunities for further interpretation and comparison to software developers, project leaders, and researchers. However, these results cannot be generalized due to the specificity of the context we have studied. Replications of this study, in other business domains, are needed to generalize the results.