Software reuse success factors: A qualitative assessment of developers' perception

Systematic reuse is becoming an increasingly accepted 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 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 factors that affect reuse success of individual projects in software development. We assess the developers' perception of the project level factors in an environment in which systematic software reuse is conducted successfully. 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.