A Tactic-Driven Process for Developing Reusable Components

True reusability of components assumes that they not only offer the functionality prescribed by their APIs, but also that they conform to a well-defined set of quality attributes so that we know if a component can be successfully reused in a new software product. One of the problems with quality attributes however is that it is hard to identify the characteristics of components that contribute to their emergence. End-user quality attributes are versatile and difficult to predict but their occurrence is not of an accidental nature. In this paper we propose a methodology for the exploration of candidate architectural tactics during component analysis and design for the achievement of desirable quality effects. Our approach is based on executable specifications of components that are augmented with the required tactic-related parameters to form a testbed for quality-driven experimentation. We believe that the proposed approach delivers both reusable components as well as reusable models.