Component Recycling for Agile Methods

Given the increasing size and complexity of today´s systems, reusability is an important quality aspect. In this work we consider development and reuse of reusable components in the context of agile methods. To distinguish the proposed approach from the more established systematic reuse approaches we call our proposal component recycling instead of component reuse. For the development of recyclable components we show how inherent characteristics of agile methods, particularly the provision of useful and complete partial components during the lifecycle, can be used constructively for the development of components. These components are placed in a component repository for later recycling. The requirements implemented at each iteration serve as the design rationale for the components and distinguish earlier components from their later versions providing tracing.