Component reuse in software design: an observational study

The adoption of a component-based strategy for software development is likely to require a major paradigm shift in design practices in order to incorporate such factors as reuse and goodness of fit. This paper describes an empirical study that we have performed to investigate how designers' strategies evolve when using Unix processes as components. Our results suggest that, as they gain confidence, designers adopt a more strongly opportunistic strategy, and we particularly identify the importance of having access to component documentation when making design decisions, regardless of a designer's detailed solution strategy. We conclude by identifying some of the attributes that will be needed in any tools and environments that are intended to support component-based software development, and discuss the role that studies of this type can play in software engineering research.