Computer-Aided Extraction of Software Components

In a software project, outsourcing the development of a particular functionality, reusing a part in another software, or handing-over a part of the code to a new team member requires the extraction of an independent subset of the software-a component. This paper describes and analyzes the process of extracting such a component. We introduce an automated approach based on optimizing the cut between the new component and the remaining system. A visual development tool implements our approach and interactively supports the extraction. Finally, we look at the results of a thinking aloud user study and discuss the lessons learned about the extraction tool as well as the extraction process.