Case-based design browser to support software reuse: theoretical structure and empirical evaluation

Abstract

With the proliferation of large, complex software systems, reuse of previous software designs and software artifacts, such as operation concepts, requirements, specifications and source code, is an important issue for both industry and government. Reuse has long been expected to result in substantial productivity and quality gains. To date, this expectation has been largely unmet. One reason may be the lack of tools to support software reuse.This research proposes the development of one such tool, the Design Browser. The Design Browser is a software architecture intended to support designers of large software systems in the early stages of software design, specifically conceptual design. The Design Browser is based on principles derived from cognitive engineering (e.g. Woods & Roth, 1988 a); naturalistic decision-making, particularly Klein's (1989) recognition-primed decision making model; and Kolodner's (1993) approach to case-based reasoning.As a proof-of-concept demonstration, the Design Browser was implemented for a NASA satellite control sub-system—the command management system (CMS). An empirical evaluation was conducted. It used the CMS Design Browser and participants who were part of the three user groups often involved in large-scale commercial software development. These groups are the software design team, the users and management. The results of the evaluation show that all three groups found the CMS Design Browser quite useful as demonstrated by actual performance and subjective rating.