Reuse Based Software Factory

Abstract

This paper reports on an experiment on how is it possible to multiply the efficiency and quality of a software development process by means of industrial manufacturing organizations and methods and state of the art reuse and product-line technology. Of course all methods and technology claim the same objectives, therefore the experiment objective of dramatic improvements. This chapter does not report on toy-demonstrators but on a real application at a large IT development department of a large business user organization using conventional computer technology with high responsibility and reliability requirements. The solutions have since been deployed involving some hundreds of programmers, to the satisfaction of all stockholders in the business: users, developers, management and even owners. The experiment result, in a medium to large development organization, requires a significant investment which produces average Reuse Rates around 70-80%, effectively halves the cost and time-to-market of software development, and reduces the error rates several-fold. The method is compatible and complementary with software development models such as the Capability Maturity ModelTM, SPICE, ISO9001 or the new Agile software development methodologies.