Supporting reusable component selection with use case gap-based development effort estimation

Reuse-based development effort is an important factor to be considered when selecting appropriate reusable components. However, it's rarely considered very seriously in current practice, as current methods for estimation of reuse development effort rely heavily on personal experience and different developers may provide very diverse estimates. In this paper, we propose a method - AREA (Asset Reuse Econometric Analysis) that enables systematic evaluation of development effort for a new software based on consideration of alternative reusable components. The core components of the method are a process guiding the evaluation and an algorithm for calculating the effort based on use case gap analysis between to-be developed new software and selected reusable components. A proof-of-concept implementation of AREA is introduced and the feedback acquired through its pilot with a solution development team in IBM's Global Business Solutions Center (GBSC) is presented.