Conventional and Open Source Software Reuse at Orbotech – an Industrial Experience Shlomit Morad 1 and Tsvi Kuflik 2 1 Orbotech, 2 University of Haifa 1 shlomit@orbotech.com, 2 kuflik@ is. haifa.ac.il Abstract Orbotech, as part of the Israeli Software Reuse Industrial Consortium (ISWRIC), explored the possibilities of software reuse in a three-year project, supported by the Israel Ministry of Trade and Commerce. The positive economical results of the project made software reuse a common practice at Orbotech. Further experimentation of reusing Open Source Software (OSS) demonstrated the high potential of that approach, when carefully integrated with the standard organizational development process. The conclusions from Orbotech experience are that when carefully planned and implemented, software reuse provides the anticipated benefits of cost reduction, improved quality and shorter Time-to-Market. The reuse of OSS may provide even higher benefits than conventional software reuse. Nevertheless, as in many cases before, implementation of software reuse requires management support and commitment, as well as acceptance by the developers themselves. As such, software reuse implementation proves to be a complex task that needs to be tailored specifically to the implementing organization. 1. Introduction It is widely accepted that software reuse is a major component of many software productivity improvement efforts, because it can result in higher quality software at a lower cost and delivered within a shorter time period [5]. The recommended approach for software reuse is the adoption of the product line approach of Boehm [2]. This approach is detailed in [3], which describes a product line organized to operate in two circles: core asset development and products development. Core assets are software artifacts that are developed or acquired for the product line as a whole. These assets are later acquired as building blocks for specific products. Software reuse is not merely a technical issue. On the contrary, the organizational challenges of software reuse outweigh the technical ones, as summarized by the “STARS” program report, for example [12], and by many other software reuse case studies like [1, 4, 11]. As a result, economical proofs supported by adequate metrics are needed in order to make “business decisions possible by quantifying and justifying the investment necessary to make reuse happen” [10]. In fact, there are many software reuse success stories where the economical benefits are evident in practice. For example, substantial costs were saved due to implementation of software reuse in the “STARS” demonstration project. The first system developed cost 43% of a reference baseline and a second cost only 10% [12]. Another example is the experience at Hewlett-Packard described in [8] where, by applying software reuse, a defect reduction of 15% was achieved and productivity increased by 57%. Other cases presented by Poulin [10] are just a few examples of the numerous success stories of software reuse. Jacobson et al. [5] suggested the “the incremental adoption of reuse”, described as a practical approach for transition toward becoming a domain-specific reuse-driven organization. However, the transition phase is lengthy, and every organization needs to find its own way. It is not obvious that the same approach is good for everyone. The need to change the nature of the organization while adopting software product line approach, the initial investments involved and the need to preserve current development activities, discourage organizations from implementing software reuse. In order to overcome the problem of initial implementation, the Israel Ministry of Trade and Commerce supported a consortium of eight system development companies, in a three-year project of studying and establishing software reuse. The mutual effort and the government support encouraged the management of these companies to support the experimentation. Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Software - Science, Technology & Engineering (SwSTE’05) 0-7695-2335-8/05 $ 20.00 IEEE