THE DARK SIDE OF COMPONENTS

11 September 2001

According to the Cutter Business Technology Council, using third-party components in software development, while a time saver, may in fact place an unexpected and potentially severe limitation on the reliability of your product. And, according to a new survey by Cutter Consortium, more than three-quarters of respondents are using components.

Does your organization develop applications with component-based technologies?

Yes             80%
No              17%
Don't know       3%
[Source: Cutter Consortium]

"Developers today are addicted to scores of mysterious software components, many of which they don't even know they're using because they're embedded within other components," says Cutter Business Technology Council Fellow James Bach. "Consequently, they have no ability to fix many of the problems that plague their code. This means there's an upper limit to the reliability of most software, and that limit is drifting lower with each industry expo."

To find out if components are a net benefit or a net liability for your company, the Cutter Business Technology Council suggests doing the following:

• Check your defect tracking system
  
  

  How many problems in the system have been deferred as "can't fix" due to component problems?

• Look closely at schedule slippage
  
  

  The time it takes to integrate components with your code may be much longer than originally expected.

• Poll your developers
  
  

  They may give you an earful about which components work well and which ones don't.

• Realize you may not get straight answers
  
  

  The person who had the idea to use a component might not want to tell you that it doesn't work well and that the entire architecture of the product has to be changed.

"The dark side of components is something to be balanced with the bright side," concludes Bach. "In some projects, it might constitute gross negligence to use a certain component because of the risk. In other projects, it would be negligent not to use it because of the benefit. Technology is intoxicating. When it works, it can really pay off. And mostly it works. What I think has changed in the past 15 years is how frequently we encounter problems that no one knows how to fix or even how to investigate."

--Cutter Consortium

[These statistics were taken from Cutter Consortium's Business Technology Trends and Impacts Service. For more information, please contact Dennis Crowley at +1 781 641 5125 or +1 800 964 5125 or e-mail dcrowley@cutter.com or visit http://www.cutter.com/consortium/index_trends.html.]