A Generalized Reuse Framework for System Development

Reuse has been gaining ever increasing focus in all stages of system development process as the prospects of leveraging prior investments to save costs, shorten delivery schedule, and possibly improve product quality are appealing to system developers. However, the concept reuse is often poorly understood and the practice has not been as effective, particularly in systems engineering. This paper conceptualizes a generalized reuse framework for system development using an activity-based modelling approach. It examines reuse from both the producer’s and consumer’s points of view and links the essential reuse activities for the production and consumption processes through reusable resources. A classification schema is proposed to evaluate reuse from the two perspectives, i.e., development for reuse and development with reuse. Interface between the two strategies is discussed and notional scenarios to apply this framework are also presented.