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Quality, productivity and economic benefits of software reuse: a review of industrial studies

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Abstract

Systematic software reuse is proposed to increase productivity and software quality and lead to economic benefits. Reports of successful software reuse programs in industry have been published. However, there has been little effort to organize the evidence systematically and appraise it. This review aims to assess the effects of software reuse in industrial contexts. Journals and major conferences between 1994 and 2005 were searched to find observational studies and experiments conducted in industry, returning eleven papers of observational type. Systematic software reuse is significantly related to lower problem (defect, fault or error) density in five studies and to decreased effort spent on correcting problems in three studies. The review found evidence for significant gains in apparent productivity in three studies. Other significant benefits of software reuse were reported in single studies or the results were inconsistent. Evidence from industry is sparse and combining results was done by vote-counting. Researchers should pay more attention to using comparable metrics, performing longitudinal studies, and explaining the results and impact on industry. For industry, evaluating reuse of COTS or OSS components, integrating reuse activities in software processes, better data collection and evaluating return on investment are major challenges.

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Notes

  1. This paper is extended in Mohagheghi and Conradi (2007), and some information is taken from the extended version.

  2. Succi et al. (2001) can be classified as a case study as well, but research questions and hypotheses are not well-stated in the paper.

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Acknowledgement

This review was done in the SEVO (Software EVOlution in component-based software engineering) project (SEVO 2006), which is a Norwegian R&D project for 2004–2008 with contract number 159916/V30. We thank Marco Torchiano for his comments on the first version of this review. We also thank the anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and suggestions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. SINTEF, ICT, P.O.BOX 124, Blindern, 0314, Oslo, Norway

    Parastoo Mohagheghi

  2. Department of Computer and Information Science, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, 7491, Trondheim, Norway

    Parastoo Mohagheghi & Reidar Conradi

Authors
  1. Parastoo Mohagheghi
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  2. Reidar Conradi
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Parastoo Mohagheghi.

Appendices

Appendix

Table 12 An overview of papers
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Appendix

Table 13 Data on reuse approaches
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Appendix

Table 14 Quantitative data presented in the papers and analysis methods
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Appendix

Table 15 Summary of quantitative findings in sister-project studies
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Appendix

Table 16 Summary of quantitative findings in component-comparison studies
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Mohagheghi, P., Conradi, R. Quality, productivity and economic benefits of software reuse: a review of industrial studies. Empir Software Eng 12, 471–516 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10664-007-9040-x

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