CORDIS Archive : ESSI 23960 SURPRISE

Esprit Project 23960 - SURPRISE
SURVEY ON POSSIBILITIES OF REUSE IN SOFTWARE ENGINEERING

Keywords:                         Reuse, Productivity, Quality  


Technologies/Methodologies/Tools: Software reuse

OBJECTIVES

Despite the very high potential impact widely recognized to reuse in building better software, cheaper and sooner, few companies have a solid and credible reuse programme in place. The reasons for the slow take-up of reuse is that it is difficult technically to achieve success, and there are complex sets of factors (human, organisational, process) influencing success.

Sources of information about reuse exist, but they are often difficult to use and coming from research projects. ESSI PIEs dealing with reuse are a rich, up-to-date, industrial source of information, but material from these projects is scattered, difficult to find, and requires a lot of investment to be exploited. The objective of SURPRISE is to package this information in a usable, ready-to-use handbook on how to achieve reuse in an industrial context.

ACTIONS

The handbook will be the result of the following actions:

Definition of a framework for analysing and comparing reuse processes and their economic impact. The framework builds on existing material, and the Esprit REBOOT project in particular.
Analysis of PIEs concerning reuse, and assessment of their reuse processes against the framework. Considering the ESSI pilot phase, the 1995 and 1996 ESSI calls, it is expected that around 40 industrial reuse processes will be assessed. Moreover a selected subset of around 10 PIEs from the 1995 call will be assessed in depth.
Aggregation of data from analyses into a Reuse Handbook, including economic guidelines, for deciding whether to introduce reuse in an organization; and technical guidelines, for choosing technology and tools and setting up technical and organizational conditions for achieving reuse

When the Handbook will be available, its diffusion will start by using existing channels. Tutorials at international events, papers in conferences and journals, web sites, mailing lists will be used to advertise the existence of the Handbook and diffuse its essential contents. The distribution free of charge of copies of the Handbook will diffuse the entire contents to a selected, interested audience of 1000 European companies.

EXPECTED IMPACT AND EXPERIENCE

The impact which SURPRISE seeks to make is to encourage many more European organisations to embark on the high-impact strategy of software process and product improvement through successful reuse.

The benefits of SURPRISE are that it packages the available practical information on reuse in a carefully digested and usable form. The information is essentially of two kinds: evidence of past experience, and guidance on how to get started. It is presented to the two key audiences: executive decision makers, and software practitioners.

Contractor:        Valtech SA                  Mr Michel Ezran          
                   Tour CBC - 8, rue Felix Pyat                            
                   92043 Paris La Defense      tel: +33 1 4693 2900        
                   France                      fax: +33 1 4693 2903        
email: me@valtech.fr