Choosing reusable software strategies

Abstract

For many organisations, choosing a reusable software strategy such as whether to be developing products, platforms or components, or some combination of these is not straightforward. The appropriateness of the choice can also change as an organisation's internal and external business environment context changes. In this paper we provide a management tool to help guide that decision making. We set out four broad types of business strategy and map these against four different types of reusable software development strategy. The four types of business strategy correspond to different business environments which are in turn characterised by different combinations of market predictability (low to high) and an organisation's ability to influence it (low to high). To demonstrate the framework as an analytical tool we have mapped examples of different organisations reusable software strategies and explained some circumstances in which that organisation's strategy may change.