Reusability-Based Strategy for Development of Information Systems

This paper describes the experience of a large bank in designing and implementing an information systems strategy that is based on the concept of reusability. The design and implementation was performed in two stages: (1) building a prototype to investigate the feasability and attractiveness of reusability concept for the bank; and (2) its subsequent implementation using a library of reusable entities and a programmer’s workbench. The implementation experience confirmed that applying the reusability concept to all stages of the system’s life cycle results in both strategic (e.g., improving programmer productivity and increasing the bank’s capacity for timely response to market opportunities) and operational (e.g., reducing and controlling system development and maintenance costs) benefits. It is estimated that the library of reusable entities embedded within the programmer workbench saved the bank over $1.5 million in development costs in 1989 alone. Two of the most important lessons learned in implementing the reusability-based strategy are: (1) reusability comes in many flavors and should be applied to all stages of systems life cycle; and (2) major challenges in implementing the reusability-based strategy are managerial, not technical.