WAdaS'96 Technical Issues Workshop

Reuse Technical Issues

• People (50%)
• Process (25%)
• Other (25%)
  • Development Environment
  • Management
  • Schedule

Reuse Technical People Issues

• Difficult to apply new technology (technology transfer)
• Need Domain Knowledge to be able to evaluate the "reusability" of a potential reuse candidate
• Need Domain Knowledge when trying to decide what to make reusable, and how future reusers may wish to adapt it

Reuse Technical People Issues (cont.)

• We know that some software engineers are "better" than others
  • Some people speculate that the difference may be as much as an order of magnitude
• Need to have an environment that allows people of all abilities to produce and consume reusable assets
• Need to create a list of reuse techniques
  • Guidance for when each one should be used
  • Examples of when they were successful
  • Books on patterns tend to be very advanced

Reuse Technical People Issues (cont.)

• Do incentives work?
  • Which ones?
  • Examples
• Do metoring programs work?
• What type of organizational structure works best for reuse?
  • Separate reuse team?
  • Make reuse everyone's responsibility?
  • Separate architecture committee?
• Other People Issues?

Reuse Technical Process Issues

• Should we tailor the process for the average developers or the exceptional achievers?
• Advantages for the exceptional achievers:
  • Reduces the number of things that need to be written down
  • can rely on the individual to "figure it out"
• Advantages for the average developer:
  • Reduces the number of times an exceptional achiever needs to be involved
  • Average developer can reach a greater potential if they have a written process

Reuse Technical Process Issues (cont.)

• Standards
  • Documents that state the requirements, goals, and objective
  • Does not state how things are done, only what it done
  • Should be short and sweet
  • Should have a separate document for each phase of the life cycle
• Guidance Manuals
  • Each document that describes a standard should have an corresponding guidance manual that provides guidance, procedures, and rationale
  • Are there guidance manuals that do not have a corresponding standard?

Reuse Infrastructure

• Need to have an infrastructure for building systems
• Need to provide ways for people to distinguish between the reusable and non-reusable parts of the system
• Need to have a strategy for building a system from reusable pieces
  • Design a "plug-n-play" architecture
  • Automated way to "glue together" reusable pieces
  • Develop "wrappers" for reusable software
  • Some way of reducing the percentage of custom software and increasing the reusable software

Last Modified: June 21, 1996