Alexander Bau
Construct: Reuse
 
 
 

Items

It was difficult to find items that measure software reuse. Although one survey measured some aspects of software reuse, it was incomplete. A complete survey should have instruments that measure the following aspects of software reuse (characteristics from Cybulski 1996):

  1. Types of software artifacts available for reuse
    This includes code fragments, logical program structures, functional structures, domain knowledge, knowledge of development process, environment-level information, and artifact transformation.
  2. Quality of software artifacts for reuse (i.e., is module X free of bugs and errors and can it be transported into a different system)
    Instruments should measure the degree to which an artifact is expressive, definite, transferable, additive, formal, machine representable, self-contained, language independent, able to represent data and procedures, verifiable, simple, and/or easily changeable.
  3. How reuse is implemented in projects
  4. Company incentives to promote reuse

 

The following sixteen questions are from a questionnaire created by William Frakes and Christopher Fox [6]:
1: How widely reused are common assets?
      Value of Asset x (ex: Unix environment), from 1 (not valuable) through 3 (somewhat valuable) to 5 (very valuable)
2: Does programming language affect reuse?
      What percent of the lifecycle objects your organization creates are typically composed of reusable parts?"
3: Do CASE tools promote reuse?
      CASE tools have promoted reuse across projects in our organization.
4: Do developers prefer to build from scratch or to reuse?
      It's more fun to write my own software than to try to reuse.
5: Does perceived economic feasibility influence reuse?
      Reuse is economically feasible in my organization.
7: Does software engineering experience influence reuse?
      I was educated about software reuse in school.
      My organization has an education program about software reuse.
8: Do recognition rewards increase reuse?
      What kind of incentives are in place to reward reuse?
9: Does a common software process promote reuse?
      A common software development process has promoted reuse across projects in our organization.
10: Do legal problems inhibit reuse?
      Is reuse inhibited by possible legal problems?
11: Does having a reuse repository improve code reuse?
      Analysis of the impact of having a repository on organizational code reuse levels.
12: Is reuse more common in certain industries?
      Respondents were asked to classify their companies by primary business.
13: Are company, division, or project sizes predictive of organizational reuse?
      How many employees work at your company?
      How any employees work at your division?

14: Are quality concerns inhibiting reuse?
      Software developed elsewhere meets our standards.
      What percentage of the parts you reuse are from external sources?

15: Are organizations measuring reuse, quality, and productivity?
      Does your organization have a program in place to measure levels of reuse?
16: Does reuse measurement influence reuse?
      Analysis of differences between median levels of organizational reuse for various lifecycle objects for respondents       whose organizations are and are not measuring reuse.