The role of opportunism in the software design reuse process

Software design involves translating a set of task requirements into a structured description of a computer program that will perform the task. A software designer can use design schema, collaborative design knowledge, or can reuse design artifacts. Very little has been done to include reuse of design artifacts in the software development life cycle, despite tremendous promises of reuse. As a result, this technique has not seen widespread use, possibly due to a lack of cognitive understanding of the reuse process. This research explores the role of a specific cognitive aspect, opportunism, in demand-side software reuse. We propose a cognitive model based on opportunism that describes the software design process with reuse. Protocol analysis verifies that the software design with reuse is indeed opportunistic and reveals that some software designers employ certain tasks of the reuse process frequently. Based on these findings, we propose a reuse support system that incorporates blackboard technology and existing reuse library management system.