Reuse through requirements traceability

The Reuse of code artefacts can make development quicker, cheaper and more robust, but is complex and has many pitfalls: Code artefacts must exist, be available, be found, be understood, be valid and finally be integrated. Many software developers try to ensure that artefacts meet these requirements through a process of making code "reusable". If the generation of reusable artefacts from developed code could be automated development time could be reduced. Code artefacts must be gathered and indexed automatically with no extra work. Our review of requirement management and version control tools identified a way to generate reuse artefacts through traceability, using information from the requirement management system and code stored in the version control system. A prototype to search these indexed artefacts showed that this tool could substantially reduce development time for simple tasks, by up to 63%. © 2008 IEEE.