Software reuse economics

Abstract

The software industry is painfully realizing that a software reuse effort, if not carefully planned and properly carried out, oftentimes becomes an inhibitor rather than a catalyst to software productivity and quality. Despite numerous ar ticles in the areas of domain analysis, component classification, automated component storage/retrieval tools, reuse metrics, etc., only a handful have managed to address the economics of software reuse. In order to be successful, not only must a reuse program be technically sound, it must also be economically worthwhile. After all, reducing costs and increasing quality were the two main factors that drove software reuse into the software mainstream. This paper presents a number of reuse economics models used to perform an economic assessment of a reuse effort on a large-scale Ada project: the United States Federal Aviation Administration's Advanced Automation System (FAA/AAS). Reuse economics models, cost/benefit tracking methods, and reuse catalystslinhibitors are addressed.