Software reuse: a challenge

One of the most promising techniques for achieving a significant level of improvement is reuse. In the past, reuse in the small, within a product line, was commonplace. This would typically yield about 25% of reused code for product line additions. The goal of work going on at Bellcore is to expand this reuse across product lines and raise the level of reuse to at least double this level with current technology. With new advances in software abstraction, and the current work as a base, this may increase overall productivity by a factor of five or more. The current efforts within Bellcore to achieve a high level of reuse are described.< >