Publication Type

Journal Article

Version

publishedVersion

Publication Date

9-1991

Abstract

Growing competition in the investment banking industry has given rise to increasing demand for high functionality software applications that can be developed in a short period of time. Yet delivering such applications creates a bottleneck in software development activities. This dilemma can be addressed when firms shift to development methods that emphasize software reusability. This article examines the productivity implications of object and repository-based integrated computer-aided software engineering (ICASE) software development in the context of a major investment bank's information systems strategy. The strategy emphasizes software reusability. Our empirical results, based on data from 20 projects that delivered software for the bank's New Trades Processing Architecture (NTPA), indicate an order of magnitude gain in software development productivity and the importance of reuse as a driver in realizing this result. In addition, results are presented on the extent of the learning that occurred over a two-year period after ICASE was introduced, and on the influence of the link between application characteristics and the ICASE tool set in achieving development performance. This work demonstrates the viability of the firm's IS strategy and offers new ideas for code reuse and software development productivity measurement that can be applied in development environments that emphasize reuse.

Keywords

CASE, ICASE, productivity measurement, reuse, software development, software economics. software engineering

Discipline

Computer Sciences | Finance and Financial Management | Management Information Systems | Software Engineering

Research Areas

Information Systems and Management

Publication

MIS Quarterly

Volume

15

Issue

3

First Page

375

Last Page

401

ISSN

0276-7783

Identifier

10.2307/249649

Publisher

University of Minnesota

Additional URL

https://doi.org/10.2307/249649

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