AN ANALYSIS OF ERRORS IN A REUSE-ORIENTED DEVELOPMENT ENVIRONMENT

Component reuse is widely considered vital for obtaining significant i mprovement in development productivity. However, as an organization ad opts a reuse-oriented development process, the nature of the problems in development is likely to change. In this article, we use a measurem ent-based approach to better understand and evaluate an evolving reuse process. More specifically, we study the effects of reuse across seve n projects in narrow domain from a single development organization. An analysis of the errors that occur in new and reused components across all phases of system development provides insight into the factors in fluencing the reuse process. We found significant differences between errors associated with new and various types of reused components in t erms of the types of errors committed. In addition, we identified diff erences when errors are introduced and the effect that the errors have on the development process. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Inc.