Developing tools for reverse engineering in a software product-line architecture

Software reuse should be engineered as early as possible in the software development life cycle. The earlier reusability considerations are put into software development, the larger the payoff can be obtained from reuse. Today, many organizations recognize that an architecture represent a significant investment of both time and effort of its design expertise. The organizations want to maximize this investment by reusing architecture on multiple systems. There are two settings in which architectures can be reused: within an organization and across organizations. This paper describes our work in creating and evolving product-line architecture for a family of software systems within an organization. The approach is illustrated with an industrial example of a commercial tool for reverse engineering. This paper also presents the problems with the solutions in reusing architecture in an industrial setting.