Assessing the stability of selected software components for reusability

The need to develop software of great quality with timely delivery and tested components gave birth to reuse. Component reusability entails the use (re-use) of existing artifacts to improve the quality and functionalities of software. Many researches have considered and justified common reusability factors such as customizability, portability, interface complexities, understandability/Documentability etc. but with limited works on stability as a factor. The need to experiment stability (in the context of volatility) as a factor for determining component reusability, is an attempt to lend our voice to the domain of component reusability. This study introduces and justifies stability, in the context of volatility of software component, as a factor that determines the reusability of software components. As part of the study’s methodology, sixty-nine (69) software components were collected from third party, and data extracted from their features were used to compute the metric values of stability. The experimented conducted proved the stability status of the various component types considered.