Critical success factors for software reuse projects

Systematic reuse is becoming an increasingly popular way to improve software development productivity and quality. The implementation of a software reuse methodology requires substantial investments for the company. The factors that contribute to the overall success of reuse for an organization have been examined in prior research. However, even in organizations that are successful in employing reuse, some projects may fail to achieve the targeted amounts of reuse. This suggests that there are other factors beyond the overall organizational factors affecting the success of software reuse in projects. This research explores the factors contributing to reuse success of individual projects in organizations that practice systematic software reuse methodologies. Structured interviews are conducted with software developers to identify the factors and project data is scrutinized to assess the impact of these factors. Reuse success is measured by the reuse percentage achieved. A large scale survey of software development firms will be used to empirically tests the relevance of the identified factors to systematic reuse in general. We believe that an organization that can identify the factors affecting potential software reuse will be able to better target investments in the improvement of reuse methodology and thus influence the software productivity and quality.