Increasing Productivity through Total Reuse Management (trm)

Total Reuse Management (TRM) is a new concept currently being promoted by the NASA Langley Software Engineering and Ada Lab (SEAL). It uses concepts similar to those promoted in Total Quality Management (TQM). Both technical and management personnel are continually encouraged to think in terms of reuse. Reuse is not something that is aimed for after a product is completed, but rather it is built into the product from inception through development. Lowering software development costs, reducing risk, and increasing code reliability are the more prominent goals of TRM. This paper describes procedures and methods used to adopt and apply TRM. Reuse is frequently thought of as only being applicable to code. However, reuse can apply to all products and all phases of the software life cycle. These products include management and quality assurance plans, designs, and testing procedures. Specific examples of successfully reused products will be given and future goals will be discussed. WHAT IS TOTAL REUSE MANAGEMENT Total Reuse Management (TRM) is achieved when an organization as a whole and its individual members make a commitment to continuously: search for reuse opportunities associated with each work product and activity; distribute notices to appropriate members of the organization of identified reuse opportunities; and actually reuse products, ideas, methods, and procedures. It is similar to Total Quality Management (TQM) in that its success depends on individuals adopting a mindset which influences all their activities, that is, reuse becomes a way of thinking and acting. With the expectation of increased productivity, management provides the necessary time and personnel for the record keeping and documentation required to support TRM reuse activities. GOALS OF TOTAL REUSE MANAGEMENT The major goal of TRM is to reduce software development costs by reusing previously developed knowledge and products instead of redeveloping them. Goals directly related to code development include reducing risk and enhancing reliability. The growth of reuse within a project decreases the number of elements to be developed which decreases the stress on the project schedule and thus lowers the risk of overruns. Since each time a component is reused it is retested in its new application, the additional error discovery and correction process naturally yields an enhanced product reliability. The greater the number of reused components the lower the overall risk of mission failure. Further, the successful demonstration in a previous project of a proposed method of implementation, increases confidence that the method is a worthy candidate for reuse. Another goal is process improvement since reuse can include procedures and methods as well as products. By documenting the improvements in procedures followed on a given project those improved techniques become available for reuse on future projects, thus improving the organization’s procedures and methods over time. THE TRM ADOPTION PROCESS The first step is to instill a reuse mindset into the members of the organization. This was done from the top down at the Software Engineering and Ada Lab (SEAL). The SEAL adopted the idea of reuse as one of the lab’s primary objectives. To achieve this objective, the regular weekly software management staff meetings were supplemented with discussions to promote reuse, determine individual project components which had reuse potential, and focus on reuse successes. Each project manager would report on products, concepts, and ideas which they considered candidates for reuse. In addition, project managers were required to report on products which had been successfully reused. Listing examples of these products gave other project managers ideas on where reuse might be possible on their project. Once the project managers began to adopt a reuse mindset the weekly reports were changed to monthly ones. Similarly, project managers were responsible for the introduction of TRM on their individual projects at project level staff meetings. In addition, a catalogue of various types of products reused was kept and is now being used to aid in training new employees so that they can quickly become contributors to the TRM program.