What is strategic reuse?
Strategic software reuse has been referred to as the “holy grail” of software engineering. We know that developers often unwittingly write code for similar functionality at different times, across different platforms, across different agencies, or even within the same agency. One of BSCoE’s main goals is to stop this needless cycle of redundancy. The challenges include: • Identification of core functionality in terms of design and implementation • Properly refactoring assets to make them reusable • Storage and retrieval of assets, including governance • Selling the idea of reuse when the “up-front” development costs are higher The cost of producing reusable products is typically more than double the cost of producing a “one-off” implementation. However, the payback occurs when the asset is reused: if development costs are doubled, the third and subsequent reuses of an asset are “free.
