This book documents methods for quantifying the benefits of software reuse so that developers can accurately judge whether the benefits outweigh the disadvantages. It explains how to apply reuse metrics, reuse economic models, and reuse Return-On-Investment (ROI) models in diverse organizations and many different programming languages.

Going where no book on software measurement and metrics has previously gone, this critique thoroughly examines a number of bad measurement practices, hazardous metrics, and huge gaps and omissions in the software literature that neglect important topics in measurement. The book covers the major gaps and omissions that need to be filled if data about software development is to be useful for comparisons or estimating future projects. Among the more serious gaps are leaks in reporting about software development efforts that, if not corrected, can distort data and make benchmarks almost useless and possibly even harmful. One of the most common leaks is that of unpaid overtime. Software is a very labor-intensive occupation, and many practitioners work very long hours. However, few companies actually record unpaid overtime. This means that software effort is underreported by around 15%, which is too large a value to ignore. Other sources of leaks include the work of part-time specialists who come and go as needed. There are dozens of these specialists, and their combined effort can top 45% of total software effort on large projects. The book helps software project managers and developers uncover errors in measurements so they can develop meaningful benchmarks to estimate software development efforts. It examines variations in a number of areas that include: Programming languages Development methodology Software reuse Functional and nonfunctional requirements Industry type Team size and experience Filled with tables and charts, this book is a starting point for making measurements that reflect current software development practices and realities to arrive at meaningful benchmarks to guide successful software projects.

Observers in the present usually have an advantage when it comes to interpreting events of the past. In the case of software reuse, how ever, it is unclear why an idea that has gained such universal accep tance was the source of swirling controversy when it began to be taken seriously by the software engineering community in the mid-1980's. From a purely conceptual point of view, the reuse of software de signs and components promises nearly risk-free benefits to the devel oper. Virtually every model of software cost and development effort predicts first-order dependencies on either products size or the num ber of steps carried out in development. Reduce the amount of new product to be developed and the cost of producing the product de creases. Remove development steps, and total effort is reduced. By reusing previously developed engineering products the amount of new product and the number of development steps can be reduced. In this way, reuse clearly has a major influence on reducing total development cost and effort. This, of course, raises the issue of from whence the reused products arise. There has to be a prior investment in creating "libraries of reuse products before reuse can be successfuL . . " How can organizations with a "bottom line" orientation be enticed into contributing to a reuse venture? Fortunately, the economics of reuse l resembles many other financial investment situations .

Publisher description for Reuse based software engineering : techniques, organization and measurement / Hafedh Mili ... [et al.]. Bibliographic record and links to related information available from the Library of Congress catalog Information from electronic data provided by the publisher. May be incomplete or contain other coding. -- Integrating three important aspects of software reuse--technical, management, and organizational--this indispensable reference shows how these fundamental aspects are used in the development lifecycle of component-based software engineering and product line engineering. The book explores the basic foundations upon which reuse processes and approaches can be established and discusses state of the art and state of the practice of software reuse. Library of Congress subject headings for this publication: Computer software Reusability

Published in 1993. Software reuse has been shown to achieve improvements in productivity, quality and timeliness of software. The collection of papers in this book were given at a seminar organized by UNICOM and the British Computer Society Software Reuse Specialist Group. They address the reasons why software reuse can maximize an organization's return from past expenditure and ensure a good future expenditure. Increasing the automation of software development requires access to explicit knowledge about processes and products involved. The chapters examine the relationship between reuse and other aspects of software engineering, including management techniques and structures, CASE, methodologies and object orientation. In addition, the papers aim to provide a structures insight into new techniques which will become available through the 1990s. This text is suitable for software managers and directors, software engineers, software professionals, academics, and other involved in software engineering research.