An empirical study of developers views on software reuse in statoil ASA

Abstract

In this article, we describe the results from our survey in the ITdepartment of a large Oil and Gas company in Norway (Statoil ASA), in order to characterize developers' views on software reuse. We have used a survey followed by semi-structured interviews, investigating software reuse in relation to requirements (re)negotiation, value of component information repository, component understanding and quality attribute specifications. All 16 developers participated in the survey and filled in the questionnaire based on their experience and views on software reuse. Our study focuses on components built and reused in-house. The results show that reuse benefits from the developers view include lower costs, shorter development time, higher quality of the reusable components and a standardized architecture. Component information repositories can contribute to successful software reuse However, we found no relation between reuse and increased rework. Component understanding was generally sufficient, but documentation could be improved. A key point here is dynamic and interactive documents. Finally, quality attribute specifications were trusted for the applications using reusable components in new development, but not for the reusable components themselves.