Maintenance with reuse: an integrated approach based on software configuration management

Software reuse has recently been considered the best solution to enhance the productivity of a software development team and to reduce maintenance costs. In addition, software configuration management (SCM) is a central part of software maintenance as it is associated with changing existing software, and is a discipline for controlling these changes and improving the maintenance process, thereby enhancing the quality of a software product. Thus, both software reuse and SCM have been proposed for making a significant improvement in productivity, quality and cost. However, so far these two technologies have been investigated separately. In order for software reuse and SCM to produce effects by synergy, both approaches require to be introduced into a maintenance environment together. Since software reuse and SCM, and software reuse and software maintenance have many similarities and relationships in their activities, these disciplines can be integrated within a software maintenance environment. The authors have therefore developed an integrated process model for maintenance with reuse (MwR) that supports SCM for a reuse library which is actively maintained for use in a maintenance environment. In this paper the MwR model and its prototype are described, followed by evaluation using a case study and conclusions.