SEIS Software Product Line Tenets

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SEIS Software Product Line Tenets

• Linda M. Northrop
• Software Engineering Institute
• IEEE Software July/August 2002

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What is a Product Line?

• A set of software-intensive systems that share
  a common, managed feature set satisfying a
  particular market segments specific needs or
  mission and that are developed from a common set
  of core assets in a prescribed way.

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Core Assets

• Basis for the software product line
• Architeture
• Reusable Components
• Domain Models
• Requirements
• Schedules
• Budgets
• Test plans
• Process descriptions
• And more

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Essential Product line activities
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Management

• Technical management core assets development and
  product development activities
• Organizational management a funding model that
  ensures core asset evolution orchestrates the
  technical activities and iterations between core
  asset development and product development.
• Important! PRODUCT LINE MANAGER

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Software product line practice areas

• A practice area is a body of work or a collection
  of activities.
• Defines activities that are smaller and more
  tractable than a broad imperative such as
  Develop core assets.

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Software Engineering practice areas

• Architecture Definition
• Architecture Evaluation
• Component Development
• COTS Utilization
• Mining Existing Assets
• Requirements Engineering
• Software System Integration
• Testing
• Understanding Relevant Domains

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Technical management practice areas

• Configuration Management
• Data Collection, Metrics, and Tracking
• Make/Buy/Mine/Commission Analysis
• Process Definition
• Scoping
• Technical Planning
• Technical Risk Management
• Tool Support

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Organizational management practice areas

• Building a Business Case
• Customer Interface Management
• Developing an Acquisition Strategy
• Funding
• Launching and Institutionalizing
• Market Analysis
• Operations
• Organizational Planning
• Organizational Risk Management
• Structuring the Organization
• Technology Forecasting
• Training

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Product line practice patterns
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Lessons learned defining the approach

• Product line business practices cannot be
  affected without explicit management commitment
  and involvement.
• Organization size doesnt matter.
• Reuse has a bad reputation in many organizations
  owing to the failure of earlier small-grained
  reuse initiatives.
• Organizations often want an evaluation of their
  product line efforts.
• Process discipline is critical.

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The Economic Impact of Product Line Adoption and
Evolution

• Klaus Schmid, Fraunhofer IESE
• Martin Verlage, Market Maker Software AG

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Big Bang approach XIncremental approach
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Product Line line investment curves
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Situations for adopting PLE

• Independent from scratch
• Project-Integrating
• Reengineering-driven Legacy systems, nontrivial
  effort
• Leveraged a new product line based on a existent
  one

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Product line evolution

• Infrastrucuture-based evolution new requirements
  lead to generalization for PL infrastructure.
• Branch-and-unite new version branch for a new
  variant and reunifies with the infrastructure
  after product release.
• Bulk larger branching (avoid!)

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Product line planning techniques

• Product portfolio scoping Which products shall
  be part of the product line?
• Domain-based scoping Which technical areas
  (domains) provide good opportunities for PL
  reuse?
• Reuse infrastructure scoping Which
  functionalities should the reuse infrastrucutre
  support?

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Product Line Tenets
Economic Impact
Situations for adopting PLE