The traditional unit of analysis and control for
software managers is the software project, and subsequently
the resulting application system. Today, with the emerging capabilities
of computer-aided software engineering (CASE) and
corresponding changes in the development process, productivity
gains can be realized by reusing portions of the organization's
inventory of existing application designs and code. With this
opportunity, however, comes the need to monitor software reuse
at the corporate level, as well as at the level of the individual
software development project. Integrated CASE environments
can support such monitoring. We illustrate the use and benefits of
repository evaluation of software reuse through an analysis of the
evolving repositories of two large firms that recently implemented
integrated CASE development tools. The analysis shows that
these tools have supported high levels of software reuse, but it
also suggests that there remains considerable unexploited reuse
potential. Our findings indicate that organizational changes will
be required before the full potential of the new technology can
be realized.Information Systems Working Papers Serie