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Code Reuse Gets Easier
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July 28, 2003 (Computerworld) -- The deputy CIO at a major aerospace company had worked hard to get her company into software reuse. She hired reuse librarians, trained developers in reuse and object-oriented methods, and overhauled the company's software development methodology. Her goal was to have 60% of the code in new systems come from a library of reusable components within 12 months. But at the end of that time, the figure stood at just 6%.
"They were doing all the right things technically," says Richard Soley, chairman and CEO of Object Management Group Inc., a standards consortium in Needham, Mass. "But when I asked her how she measured the productivity of her developers, she said the same way they always had -- by lines of code generated. And making code available for reuse just takes away from writing more lines."
Not changing programmer incentives and culture along with the technology is the No. 1 mistake companies make in software reuse, Soley says.
Diebold Inc. in North Canton, Ohio, is getting better results from its reuse program than the aerospace company did. Richard King, a senior software applications support engineer, says Diebold has seen a whopping fivefold improvement on the speed of development of new applications by using its "toolbox of reusable assets."
The toolbox holds components as simple as "read-me" text files and as complex as Java and .Net components. It uses Component Manager Enterprise Edition (CMEE), a repository manager from Flashline Inc. in Cleveland that creates searchable indexes of software-related assets and maintains metadata and use history about those assets.
CMEE spans multiple source-code repositories at Diebold, including Microsoft Visual SourceSafe and PVCS Version Manager from Merant Inc. in Hillsboro, Ore.
Although programmers at Diebold are expected to make software reusable whenever feasible, the company has a special development group dedicated to reuse. It looks for reuse needs, develops components accordingly and puts them into CMEE.
Getting developers to tap into the reuse library thereafter isn't difficult, King says. "Deadlines are so tight now that they would never be able to meet them without aggressively reusing," he explains.
Sharing Made Easier
Programmers have been swapping code for as long as software has existed.
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