Odyssey-CCS: A Change Control System Tailored to Software Reuse

Software is constantly changing and these changes may occur at anytime in the software lifecycle. In order to avoid rework and information loss, among other problems, these changes must be controlled in a proper way. When changes affect reused components, possibly composed by other components, it is important to know who is responsible for implementing them. Some consequences of this problem, named Reuse Chain of Responsibility, is the misconception on rights and duties of teams that produce and reuse components. Aiming to solve this problem, we introduce Odyssey-CCS, a flexible change control system that allows the customization of a change control process to the specific needs of software reuse. Moreover, it keeps a reuse map that holds information about contracts between components producers and reusers. The reuse map is integrated to an existing component library and is queried by Odyssey-CCS within the impact analysis activity.