Abstract

Component Based Development (CBD) has caught the attention of academics and practitioners alike. Building upon sound Object-Oriented principles, CDB has a strong conceptual foundation as well as extensive practical orientation and application. CBD approaches promise the potential to deliver quality systems in a short period of time with opportunities for component reuse to further reduce cost that seems especially appropriate for the myriad of e-business systems that are a focal point of many organizations’ contemporary systems development portfolios. Indeed, numerous commercial organizations are supplying components that can be relatively easily integrated to create cost-effective systems. Interestingly, however, CBD is currently not applied extensively. The prospective reasons are many. Management is currently ill-informed and not committed to the CBD approach as they often lack knowledge of the benefits of adopting CBD. Further, many system developers, system analysts and programmers are not aware of CBD issues and opportunities. Possible reasons could be that they received their software education a long time ago (e.g. five or ten years ago or more), and are only familiar with traditional approaches. There is also considerable confusion with regard to component granularity and CBD focus. To some, the focus is on creating the components while to others, the focus is on creating systems by integrating components. A question exists as to the role of education and research given this situation. Numerous opportunities exist for academics to play a leading role in creating awareness and removing uncertainties in exploring CBD concepts and application. However, little attention is currently being given to CBD, especially in teaching. Like IS professionals, many educators are hesitant to change from traditional development perspectives currently being taught as they face faculty development challenges. By in large, few have had experience in this area and easily fall back to what they learned historically. Further, there is a dearth of textbooks and educational material available to assist academic in the teaching process. Research seems to be fragmented and lacking coherency in focus. Research, teaching and practice all seem to be going in different directions.

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