Facts and Fallacies of Reuse in Practice

Despite the positive effects of reuse claimed in a significant amount of research, anecdotal evidence indicates that industry is not yet experiencing the expected benefit. This dissertation proposal aims to investigate these indicators and therefore addresses reuse from an industrial point of view. As a first step, it empirically assesses the general state of reuse in practice. This is achieved via a large-scale online questionnaire distributed to multiple companies. Complementing the questionnaire, extensive interviews are being scheduled with developers and project managers of the respective companies. The goal is to interview approximately 10 employees per company. Three companies have already committed to the interview phase and contact with seven further companies is currently being established. In a second step, the findings of the study will be used to extract the context and type of reuse, as well as success factors and hindrances. This information forms the basis for an analytical assessment model for internal code reuse, which is developed in a third step. It will capture a range of different aspects of reuse in practice and will be combined with a process to evaluate the adequacy of reuse. The planned result is a larger assessment framework for evaluating the reuse (management) process within a project as well as a multi-project context. As a result, guidelines for code organization should be developed and tested for their effects in improving reuse in one or more of the industrial partners projects.