Non-technical Issues

One of the most serious problems that impede CBSE is the cost involved in producing reusable components. The cost of producing reusable components is substantially higher than the cost of producing a single application without reuse consideration, as high as five times the cost of producing a single application in some cases [2], few will make this large investment for others or for the future. This approach may be considered economically viable in the commercial software development where frequent customization is needed or in the environment where a family of systems are developed and maintained. It is likely that it will take some time before CBSE becomes the common practice in software engineering. Some of the economics issues are discussed in [5].

Developing software for future reuse or for others is not an easy matter in any corporate environment where software development is managed in terms of projects. It is difficult to see any development projects that were not under schedule pressures or not in shortage of resources. Giving incentives (e.g., award, promotion) to contributors or reusers doesn't usually make much difference unless those incentives are significant. One of the most effective ways to promote CBSE in a corporate environment might be to have a central support organization dedicated to: (1) identify common needs, (2) develop, maintain, and advertise reusable components, and (3) teach and support reuse.

This support organization should consists of highly skilled software engineers who are able to perform domain analyses for the application areas of the development organizations (projects) and develop reusable components applying techniques such as meta-programming, application generator, macro processing, and template. As they can oversee many projects, they should be able to identify common problems among projects and provide generic solutions. The cost of this organization could be amortized through reuse across development projects.