Summary on “An integrated cost model for software reuse”

Today, complex, high quality computer based-systems must be built in a very short time period. This results in an organized approach to reuse. Sometime the potential gains from reusing specifications may be greater than reusing code component because code contains low level details. There are various features distinguishing between different cost models. Investment cycle which has four distinct cycles as corporate, domain engineering, application engineering and component engineering investment cycle. Economic function having five different functions as Net Present Value, Payback Value, Average Return on Book Value, Internal Rate of Return, Profitability Index. Cost factors which specifies what aspects of reuse decision we want to consider. Reuse organization- the organizational structure has some impact on how costs are determined, charged, and accounted for. Scope where some models consider a short-term decision whereas others consider a long-term investment cycle. Some cost models neglect integration costs. Some cost models fail to take into account the discount rate of resources and so on.  There are variety of viewpoints involved in software reuse initiatives like corporate executives, the producer staff, the consumer staff, library managers, and component providers. A generic software reuse model can be classified as Variety of investment cycles, Variety of cost factors, Variety of economic functions, Variety of viewpoints, Variety of hypotheses. Variety of investment cycles involve four different cycles as Corporate level decides Whether to introduce reuse in the practice of software development, Domain engineering decides whether to initiate a domain analysis/domain engineering initiative, Application engineering decides whether to introduce reuse practices for development project, Component engineering decides whether it is worthwhile to develop a specific component to serve a group of project teams. Variety of cost factors include investment Cycle, denoted by Y, measured in number of years, typically ranging between 3 and 5, discount Rate, denoted by d, is an abstract quantity, that typically ranges between 0.10 and 0.20. It reflects the time value of money, investment Costs, denoted by IC, and measured in person months because most costs that arise can best be quantified as personnel effort, episodic Benefits, at year y, for 1 <= y <= Y , denoted by B(y), and measured in person months, episodic Costs, at year y, for 1 <= y <= Y , denoted by C(y), and measured in person months. Variety of economic function include Net Present Value, denoted by N P V, measured in person months, Return on Investment, denoted by ROI. ROI recognizes that investments involve risks, Profitability Index, denoted by PI. This quantity allocates the potential profit with respect to the investment cost. An investment is worthwhile whenever P I exceed 1. Internal Rate of Return, denoted by IRR, and defined as the value of d that makes the net present value zero. Payback Value, denoted by P B and defined as the shortest investment cycle that makes the net present value non-negative. Average Rate of Return, denoted by ARR. It prorates the profitability index by the number of years in the investment cycle. Variety of viewpoint includes Component Engineering Viewpoint where We are deal with here is whether or not to develop a reusable asset to satisfy a tentatively specified set of requirements. Application Engineering Viewpoint where we deal whether or not to adopt reuse in a given development project. Domain Engineering Viewpoint where we deal whether or not to initiate a domain engineering effort in a tentatively specified application domain. Corporate Viewpoint where the investment decision we deal with is whether or not to initiate a corporate software reuse program. Variety of hypotheses includes Non-Linear Cost Effects, Integration Costs, Quantifying Quality Gains, Code Inflation. In automated support, the proposed has two main functions. In archival function, the purpose of this function is to keep track of costs and benefits as they arise. In analytical function, the purpose of this function is analyze investment cycles by producing any combinations of functions. There are various existing cost models. The model proposed by Ganey and Cruickshank combines domain engineering costs and application engineering costs in a single equation, it does not take into account considerations and assumes that the number of applications that make up the domain engineering effort is predetermined. Kain proposes a return on investment model that is especially geared towards ob ject oriented programming (where reusable assets are objects at various levels of abstraction). There are various other models.