Costs and Benefits of Domain-Oriented Software Reuse: Evidence From the STARSDemonstration Projects

摘要

For more than twelve years, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)has funded software technology initiatives under its Software Technology for Adaptable, Reliable Systems (STARS) program. Between 1992 and 1995, DARPA funded three case studies to demonstrate the use of STARS technologies on three moderately sized software development projects, one in each military department. This paper describes the costs and benefits of using STARS technologies for these demonstration projects. IDA used goal-directed identification of measures and computed indicators of project status to ensure that relevant data and analyses were planned for each project. A major challenge was the difficulty with comparing the current projects to entirely analogous previous work by the same organization. Our results suggest the benefits of domain-oriented investments can be realized in three years. Potential savings of 75% to 90% in development costs could be attained after the initial investments have been recouped.