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Understanding and Evaluating Software Reuse Costs and Benefits from Industrial Cases - A Systematic Literature Review
Blekinge Institute of Technology, Faculty of Computing, Department of Software Engineering.ORCID iD: 0000-0003-1181-9049
Blekinge Institute of Technology, Faculty of Computing, Department of Software Engineering.ORCID iD: 0000-0002-8132-0107
Blekinge Institute of Technology, Faculty of Computing, Department of Software Engineering.ORCID iD: 0000-0002-6215-1774
(English)Manuscript (preprint) (Other academic)
Abstract [en]

Companies adopt various software reuse practices to achieve more benefits. Existing secondary studies aggregated primary evidence on software reuse benefits more than the costs. It is important to know how the software reuse costs and benefits are measured and the strength of the evidence. This study aims to conduct a systematic literature review to identify the observed software reuse costs and benefits from industrial cases and investigate how the identified software reuse costs and benefits are measured. In addition, we also assess the quality of the included primary studies to understand the strength of evidence behind the identified software reuse costs and benefits. We included 30 primary studies on software reuse costs and benefits in industrial cases using a mixed search strategy - automated search and snowballing. We identified nine software reuse benefits, six software reuse costs, and the metrics used to measure them. Better quality and improved productivity are the most investigated software reuse benefits, and most primary studies that report these two benefits are of good or moderate quality. Few primary studies reported software reuse costs, and most of them are of low quality. Generally, the quality of primary studies reporting software reuse benefits is better than those reporting software reuse costs.

Keywords [en]
software reuse, costs and benefits, metrics, strength of evidence
National Category
Software Engineering
Research subject
Software Engineering
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:bth-25394OAI: oai:DiVA.org:bth-25394DiVA, id: diva2:1798009
Available from: 2023-09-18 Created: 2023-09-18 Last updated: 2023-09-20Bibliographically approved
In thesis
1. Improving Internal Software Reuse in the Context of Contemporary Software Engineering Practices
Open this publication in new window or tab >>Improving Internal Software Reuse in the Context of Contemporary Software Engineering Practices
2023 (English)Licentiate thesis, comprehensive summary (Other academic)
Abstract [en]

Context: Companies adopt many software reuse practices, such as software product line, reuse verbatim, and systematic reuse, to improve their internal software development and maximize the benefits. Contemporary software engineering (SE) practices, such as microservices and InnerSource, influence internal software reuse.

Objective: In this thesis, we aim to improve internal software reuse in the context of contemporary SE practices. To do that, we want to 1) understand the state-of-the-art and the state-of-the-practice of software reuse costs and benefits and the challenges that companies are currently facing and 2) identify interventions to improve internal software reuse. 

Methods: We conducted a systematic literature review to understand the state-of-the-art of software reuse costs and benefits. We performed two exploratory case studies to understand the state-of-the-practice of software reuse costs and benefits, challenges, and improvement areas in the context of contemporary SE practices.  We performed another follow-up improving case study to investigate the medium-sized case company's readiness of adopting InnerSource for software reuse.

Results: Existing literature reported more software reuse benefits than costs. The most reported software reuse benefits are better product quality and improved productivity. Verbatim reuse and systematic reuse result in more reuse benefits. Most of the included primary studies are of moderate quality, with only four having high quality. Practitioners think that software reuse costs in developing reusable assets will be paid off when developers start to reuse them. Challenges in software reuse in the context of contemporary SE practices differ between medium-sized and large-sized companies. Both of the companies perceive that InnerSource can help improve internal software reuse. Asking practitioners about both current and desired InnerSource reuse status helps identify the needed InnerSource improvements, thus helping companies succeed in adopting InnerSource for reuse.  

Conclusion: Both existing literature and our two case studies investigating software reuse in the context of contemporary SE practices showed that software reuse improves quality and productivity and has costs in developing and integrating reusable assets. However, the overall benefits outweigh the costs. Both case companies faced challenges in improving their internal reuse, where the most common challenges were about developing and maintaining reusable assets. The results showed that InnerSource helps develop and maintain reusable assets and further improves internal software reuse.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Karlskrona: Blekinge Tekniska Högskola, 2023. p. 215
Series
Blekinge Institute of Technology Licentiate Dissertation Series, ISSN 1650-2140 ; 2023:09
Keywords
Software reuse, Costs and benefits, Contemporary software engineering practices
National Category
Software Engineering
Research subject
Software Engineering
Identifiers
urn:nbn:se:bth-25303 (URN)978-91-7295-468-7 (ISBN)
Presentation
2023-10-25, J1630, Valhallavägen 1, 371 41, Karlskrona, 13:00 (English)
Opponent
Supervisors
Funder
Knowledge Foundation, 20190081
Note

Chapters 2 and 4 are papers submitted to journals and therefore removed from the fulltext file.

Available from: 2023-09-18 Created: 2023-09-18 Last updated: 2023-11-30Bibliographically approved

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Chen, XingruUsman, MuhammadBadampudi, Deepika

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