Toward an engineering discipline of software reuse

This article stems from a panel session at the 1997 Symposium on Software Reusability, and discusses open research issues, classified by goal and by approach. Software development cannot possibly become an engineering discipline so long as it has not perfected a technology for developing products from reusable assets in a routine manner, on an industrial scale. Software reuse cannot, in turn, achieve this status unless we make the following provisions: a sound scientific foundation that encompasses relevant design principles, widely acceptable engineering standards that compile these principles into working practical solutions, and coherent managerial standards that enable the deployment of these solutions under acceptable conditions of product quality and process maturity. Although successful software reuse experiments are increasingly common, success is not the norm, software reuse is not a matter of routine practice, the promises of software reuse remain for the most part unfulfilled, and a number of issues remain worthy of further research