This paper presents the initial results of the Surprise project. Surprise is an Essi Dissemination action, aimed at identifying and disseminating key factors in adopting or running a company wide reuse program. Key factors are derived from empirical evidence of best reuse practices, as emerged from an extensive survey of recent European reuse projects: around 18 reuse projects performed in Europe from 1994 to 1997 were analysed.

A number of key issues that determine the reuse policy have been identified: management, organisation, human aspects, processes, repository. For each of them, success and failure examples are analysed, main risks and success factors are detailed.