Conclusion

The two main contributions of this article are:

• Four analysis patterns and the economic rationale for the evolution, which address problems in cooperative work, collaborative information filtering and sharing, and knowledge management.
• An improved template for analysis patterns with a clear interface to the design phase to facilitate reuse.

To provide evidence for these contributions we analyzed the code reuse for two applications of the analysis pattern virtual library, presented in this paper, which revealed a significant reuse potential (between 49 and 91%).

Further and more detailed research on the benefits of patterns in all phases of the software life-cycle is still necessary.