The benefits of software reuse have been studied for many years. Several previous studies have observed that reused software has a lower defect density than newly built software. However, few studies have investigated empirically the reasons for this phenomenon. To date, we have only the common sense observation that as software is reused over time, the fixed defects will accumulate and will result in high-quality software. This paper reports on an industrial case study in a large Norwegian Oil and Gas company, involving a reused Java class framework and two applications that use that framework. We analyzed all trouble reports from the use of the framework and the applications according to the Orthogonal Defect Classification (ODC), followed by a qualitative Root Cause Analysis (RCA). The results reveal that the framework has a much lower defect density in total than one application and a slightly higher defect density than the other. In addition, the defect densities of the most severe defects of the reused framework are similar to those of the applications that are reusing it. The results of the ODC and RCA analyses reveal that systematic reuse (i.e. clearly defined and stable requirements, better design, hesitance to change, and solid testing) lead to lower defect densities of the functional-type defects in the reused framework than in applications that are reusing it. However, the different "nature" of the framework and the applications (e.g. interaction with other software, number and complexity of business logic, and functionality of the software) may confound the causal relationship between systematic reuse and the lower defect density of the reused software. Using the results of the study as a basis, we present an improved overall cause-effect model between systematic reuse and lower defect density that will facilitate further studies and implementations of software reuse.

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Abstract. As large companies are building up their enterprise architecture solutions, they need to relate business process descriptions to lengthy and formally structured documents of corporate policies and standards. However, these documents are usually not specific to particular tasks or processes, and the user is left to read through a substantial amount of irrelevant text to find the few fragments that are relevant to him. In this paper, we describe a text mining approach to establishing links between business process model elements and relevant parts of governing documents in Statoil, one of Norway's largest companies. The approach builds on standard IR techniques, gives us a ranked list of text fragments for each business process activity, and can easily be integrated with Statoil's enterprise architecture solution. With these ranked lists at hand, users can easily find the most relevant sections to read before carrying out their activities.

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