Improving the Reuse Process is Based on Understanding the Business and the Products: Four Case Studies

The reuse of software engineering assets has been proposed as the most promising alternative for improving productivity and software quality. The improvement of reuse requires understanding of suitable reuse strategies and the software process. In four industrial cases the reuse process is analyzed for the purpose of its improvement and remarkable differences between successful processes are found. Those differences are due to differences in the products and businesses of the analyzed companies. In some cases the product line approach fits the business very well and high level of reuse can be achieved by using it. In other cases the black-box approach to reuse has turned out to suit the bus…

Assessing Software Replacement Success: An Industrial Case Study Applying Four Approaches

This paper describes an industrial case study assessing software replacement success and other effects. The target of assessments has been a large commercial legacy system for customer register management. The success of its replacement by its performed rewrite has been assessed via four approaches concerning: user satisfaction, strengths and problems of the system, problem surveillance and expert judgments. The approaches and metrics have been selected in cooperation with industrial experts in order that they would meet the needs of their organization. The assessments have been conducted by comparing the situations before and after the rewrite. They have included quality aspects. The appli…

Software Modernization Decision Criteria: An Empirical Study

Decisions regarding software evolution strategies such as modernizations are economically important. We present results of our empirical study of the views of decision makers. We have asked their views of the relative importance of 49 software modernization decision criteria. We have gathered data from Finnish software industry. There were 26 experts from 8 organizations involved. They were mainly upper or middle level managers. Our study shows that there is a large set of criteria which should be taken into account, and that those studied by us provide a good coverage of the relevant ones. We list the top-20 criteria. We also performed a cluster analysis which produced two groups of subjec…

A modest but practical software process modeling technique for software process improvement

One of the main problems with software engineering is due to the difficulties in evaluating and improving our software processes, especially in the light of the fact that reuse depends on a process which supports it. Generally used approaches to the evaluation and improvement of software processes are based on the CMM, for example. In this paper we present a technique to improve software processes through modeling and evaluation. The presented technique is fairly easy to use, provides reasonably good results and requires only a fraction of resources required by CMM appraisals. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Defining the Process for Making Software System Modernization Decisions

This paper outlines a process for software system modernization decisions. The rationale of the process is explained and the process is defined in a way that allows its adaptation for other organizations and situations. The process is a light-weight one and is based on the use of objective data. The procedures for collecting the data are explained. The process has been used to solve a real industrial decision making situation in which the process was successful.

Use and Identification of Components in Component-Based Software Development Methods

New software systems are needed ever more but to keep up with this trend software developers must learn to create quality software more efficiently. One approach is to (re-)use components as building blocks of the new software. Recently there has been more interest to create component-based software development methods to support this. In this article we first set out requirements for reuse-based software development and then evaluate three component-based methods, namely Catalysis, OMT++, and Unified Process. As a conclusion we argue that evaluated methods produce prefabricated components and that component-based means that software developers can change better components to existing syste…

Java Integrated Development Environments' Support for Reuse-Oriented Software Development

Component reuse is a promising direction to develop software more efficiently and cost effectively. One part of software development is the actual programming with an integrated development environment (IDE). We studied three Java IDEs and how they support reuse-oriented software development. We derived evaluation criteria from a known reuse model. As a conclusion we suggest that current Java IDEs need to improve their support for the reuse process.

Suppliers’ software development project start-up practices

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to present a life cycle phase of a software development project which is substantial for the success of the project. This paper visualizes the project start-up phase from suppliers’ perspective. Design/methodology/approach The method is a theory building from case studies. The data were collected from three software supplier firms by conducting process modeling separately in each firm. Findings The study resulted in a model of a supplier’s software project start-up which includes start-up practices and involved roles. The results indicate that project start-up is an integral and structured phase of project life cycle, which influences the execution of a…

IS evolution benefit assessment: Challenges with economic investment criteria

Maintenance and system evolution activities have a significant role in the information system (IS) life cycle. It has been estimated that approximately 80% of the total IT expenses are allocated for maintenance activities [20]. According to Lehman’s first law, maintenance is necessary, because software needs to be continuously improved or it will get out of date and cannot respond to the requirements of its environment [19]. Despite the importance of IS evolution investments, there is a gap between the IT related costs and company profitability [27]. Brynjolfssen [10] described this as a productivity paradox: information technology utilization has increased since the 70’s but simultaneously…

Legacy system evolution - A comparative study of modernisation and replacement initiation factors

Decisions regarding information system evolution strategy become topical as the organisation’s information systems age and start to approach the end of their life cycle. An interview study was conducted in order to compare factors influencing modernisation and replacement initiation. System age, obsolete technology and high operation or maintenance costs were identified as triggers for both modernisation and replacement projects. The results show that the most prevalent individual reason for modernisation initiative is business development. Common initiation factors for replacement projects were end of vendor support and system’s inability to respond to organisation’s business needs. peerRe…

Industrial Application and Evaluation of a Software Evolution Decision Model

Group Decision-Making Processes in Industrial Software Evolution

Software evolution decision-making is important. Decisions can be made by an individual or a group. Currently it is not known how decision-making is organized in software industry. However, that knowledge is needed to improve the decision-making processes. Therefore, we have studied 29 decision making experts, who were involved in software evolution decision-making. The study was performed with qualitative methods, which enabled the gathering of versatile information concerning the views of the decision-makers. The study revealed group decisions are widely used both in private and public organizations and attitudes towards them are generally positive or neutral. The study provided informati…

Software Modernization and Replacement Decision Making in Industry: A Qualitative Study

Software modernization and replacement decisions are crucial to many organizations. They affect greatly to the success and well being of the organizations and their people. The decisions like that are usually presumed to be rational and based on facts. These decisions and how they are made tell much about the decision makers and the decision making tools available to them. Interviews of 29 software modernization decision makers or senior experts were analyzed in order to find out how the decisions were made and what models and tools were used. It turned out that decisions are not as rational as supposed. Intuition is the dominant factor in decision making. Formal software engineering orient…