Reuse of early life-cycle artifacts: workproducts, methods and tools

  • Authors:

  • Jacob L. Cybulski;Ralph D. "Butch" Neal;Anthony Kram;Jeffrey C. Allen

  • Affiliations:

  • Department of Information Systems, The University of Melbourne, Parkville, Vic 3052, Australia E-mail: j.cybulski@ dis.unimelb.edu.au;NASA/WVU Software Research Lab, 100 University Drive, Fairmont, WV 26554, USA;Motorola, 1501 W. Shure Drive 2F1, Arlington Heights, IL 60004, USA;Department of Computer Science, University of Maine, 237 Neville Hall, Orono, ME 04473‐5752, USA

  • Venue:
  • Annals of Software Engineering
  • Year:
  • 1998

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Abstract

In this article we describe the importance of reusing software artifacts resulting from the earliest stages of the development life‐cycle, i.e., software conception, requirements analysis, feasibility study, requirements specification, architectural and detailed design. Although reuse of early artifacts is deemed beneficial to software development projects, there are no readily available software tools that could facilitate their effective reuse. Hence, we identified nearly one hundred early artifact types. We analyzed, compared and contrasted them. We clustered similar artifact types into distinct artifact affinity groups. We then proposed several methods and techniques useful in the processing of these artifacts to support their reuse. We believe that the proposed methods could be utilized by tool builders to construct software development environments capable of assisting analysts, designers, architects and programmers to effectively reuse the results of early life‐cycle activities.