The Empirical Studies on Quality Benefits of Reusing Software Components

The benefits of reusing software components have been studied for many years. Several previous studies have concluded that reused components have fewer defects in general than non-reusable components. However, few of these studies have gone a further step, i.e., investigating which type of defects has been reduced because of reuse. Thus, it is suspected that making a software component reusable will automatically improve its quality. This paper presents an on-going industrial empirical study on the quality benefits of reuse. We are going to compare the defects types, which are classified by ODC (orthogonal defect classification), of the reusable component vs. the non-reusable components in several large and medium software systems. The intention is to figure out which defects have been reduced because of reuse and the reasons of the reduction.