Reusing business components and objects for modeling business systems: The influence of decomposition characteristics and analyst experience

Component-based development (CBD) relies on the use of pre-fabricated business components to develop new application systems, rather than developing them from scratch. It provides an attractive alternative to more established development methods such as object-oriented analysis and design (OOAD). Given the growing demands for using agile methods for software development, we examine if systems analysts are more effective at modeling business systems by reusing business components than by reusing objects. We also examine whether the influence of component or object reuse on modeling performance is moderated by prior experience in systems analysis and design. We evaluate the representational constructs of the two based on a set of decomposition characteristics, and postulate hypotheses comparing the two based on theories in cognitive psychology and human factors. We find that models generated by reusing business components are of higher accuracy than those developed by reusing objects. An interesting finding of our study is that IT professionals who are less experienced in systems analysis and design perform on par with experienced professionals, when modeling business systems by reusing components. We argue that the decomposition characteristics of components-with respect to granularity, quality, and focus-enable less experienced analysts to perform on par with more experienced analysts.