Moving Software from Expense to Asset

Reuse is recognized in Motorola, as a major cycle time and cost reduction enabler. The software vision is to assemble products from pre-fabricated parts, with a bill of material for software. This paper shares details on an asset based development strategy and approach. The key aspects of this asset based development strategy are: i) a top down, management-sponsored approach ii) driven through key changes to the software development process and iii) supported by an infrastructure/repository tool. New processes are being developed and integrated into the software development environment, to support asset based development. As part of this effort, a set of evaluation criteria has been developed for evaluating the submitted assets and to minimize potential barriers to reuse; these criteria are also discussed in this paper