The primary distinction between software product line engineering and conventional software engineering is the presence of variationin some or all of the software assets. Product lines have been used by the manufacturing industry for a long time to reduce costs and increase productivity by exploiting commonalties between products. A software product line is a set of software reliant systems that share a common, managed set of features satisfying a particular market or mission area, and are built from a common set of core assets in a prescribed way. Software product line article about software product line. The software product line approach is a strategy for producing softwareintensive products. Techniques for static analysis are often dismissed as more expensive, but in a software product line, the cost of static analysis can be amortized over multiple products. Software product lines have emerged as a new software development paradigm of great importance.
Its the most comprehensive treatment of product line practice in existence today. This article provides a list of best practices for improving the success of your software development projects. Mar 15, 2017 strategy 4 things you need to do before you launch a new product product launches can be hectic, and can easily go haywire if you dont plan them properly. Boeing builds one, and so do ford, dell, and even mcdonalds. A software product line is a set of softwareintensive systems sharing a common, managed set of features that satisfy the specific needs of a particular market segment or mission and that are developed from a common set of core assets in a prescribed way 4. Inthis article we tackle this problem by describing the design and automatedderivation of the product variants of a software product line using an easy to. The product line concept is about more than a new technology. Core assets are reusable and can be any of the following. Software product line engineering with feature models.
Many climate models are designed to be configured in different ways in order to support the different scientific requirements of a wide range of researchers. This document describes the activities and practices in which an organization must be competent before it can benefit from fielding a product line of software systems. A software product line is a family of systems that share a common set of core. Our example product line will contain different products for entry and display of meteorological data on a pc. The framework describes the essential activities and practices, in both the technical and organizational areas, in which an organization must be competent before it can reap the maximum benefit from fielding a product line of software or softwareintensive systems. The software engineering institute has identified twentynine issues or practice areas that affect an organizations success in fielding a software product line. Smaller footprint, better performance, higher test coverage, improved quality, faster time to market, lower cost maintenance lg industrial. Introduction to the emerging practice of software product. Software engineering at oxford software product lines.
Product flexibility is the anthem of the software marketplace, and product lines fulfill the promise of tailormade systems built specifically for the needs of particular customers or customer groups. A practice area is the body of work or set of activities. In this approach, as in singlesystem development, testing is essential to uncover defects. Software product lines product line engineering ple traces its roots as a field of study to software product line engineering. A software product line is a set of softwarereliant systems that share a common, managed set of features satisfying a particular market or mission area, and are built from a common set of core assets in a prescribed way. In the early stages of a software productline lifecycle, software assets contain variation points that representunbound options about how the software will behave. These commonalities among software systems are embodied in artifacts called core assets. Nowhere else in software engineering have we seen such breathtaking improvements in cost, quality, time to market, and developer productivity, often registering in the orderofmagnitude range. A product line is a set of products that together address a particular market segment or fulfill a particular mission.
This document describes a framework for product line development. The basis of sple is the explicit modelling of what is common and what differs between product variants. However, product line practice in the software industry is a relatively new concept. The software engineering institute has identified 29 practice areas that represent the skills needed by an organization adopting the product line strategy. A systematic mapping study of software product lines testing. Software product lines represent perhaps the most exciting paradigm shift in software development since the advent of highlevel programming languages.
Stay compliant and competitiveso you get the highest return on your software investmentwith a dynamics gp service plan that offers flexible options to choose from, depending on where you do business. Organizations developing a portfolio of products as a software product line are experiencing orderofmagnitude improvements in cost, time to market, staff productivity, and quality of the deployed products. In this phase, your entire product strategy and vision is taken into account, and focus is put on the initiatives that line up with the big vision of the product. Some of the practice areas defined for the product line concepts such as. Siriusdecisions research and content provides actionable businesstobusiness intelligence and guidance on key topics relevant to btob marketing, sales and product leaders seeking to drive the growth of. The variation points in the product line include the operating system on which the games run, a choice of an analog, digital, or no scoreboard, and whether the product has a practice mode. The ability to quickly understand even the most complex software ideas allows mason boswell to protect software using all of the tools provided by software patent law. Since then, the academic website has been visited by numerous researchers and research groups worldwide thereby helping to advance the software. Software product line engineering sple offers a solution to these not quite new, but increasingly challenging, problems cle01. Although the term software product line engineering is becoming more widely known, there is still uncertaintyamong developers about how it would apply in their own development context. Start selling our comprehensive solution thats built for business. Must contain one character from three of the following groups. Applying software product line principles in a product development. Producing a set of related products as a product line has allowed organizations to achieve increased.
Software product line spl engineering refers to the engineering and management techniques to create, evolve, and sustain a software product line. Krueger, dale churchett, ross buhrdorf, homeaways transition to software product line practice. A systematic testing approach can save significant development effort, increase product quality and. Because of this, climate models are akin to software product lines spls which can produce a range of individual products from the same codebase. A software product line is a portfolio of similar softwarebased systems and products produced from a shared set of software assets using a common means of production. Software product lines, and the efforts to characterize their successes, gave us early and longstanding approaches to product line engineering that we characterize as first generation approaches.
The role evolved out of a set of responsibilities that traditionally fell to lead developers and engineers. In summary software product lines epitomize the concept of strategic, planned reuse. Feature models kan90, cza00 are frequently used for this. Software product lines challenge traditional analysis techniques, such as. This definition is consistent with the definition traditionally given for any product line. A framework for software product line practice version 4. A software product line is a family of products designed to take advantage of their common aspects and predicted variabilitys. However, its comprehensive nature also means that the effort to initiate a software product line can be more than that required to adopt a new. A classification of product sampling for software product lines. Software product lines are as much about business practices as they.
Software ip specialists software innovations are protectable not just with software patents, but also with other areas of intellectual property ip law. A software product line is a set of softwareintensive systems sharing a common, managed set of features that satisfy the specific needs of a particular market segment or mission and that are developed from a common set of core assets in a prescribed way. Software organizations of all types and sizes are discovering that. A classification of product sampling for software product. Software product lines software product lines in practice medium. Although these practice areas may be required for engineering. Engineering and business results in 60 days, proceedings, splc 2008, limerick, pp. The software product line practice was designed to manage software products, and their commonalities were designed to maximize the benefits to. These goals will only be achieved if quality attributes, such as correctness and reliability, are. A software product line is a portfolio of similar software based systems and products produced from a shared set of software assets using a common means of production. Since then, the academic website has been visited by numerous researchers and research. Our offerings for marketing, sales and product leaders. Apply to product manager, product line manager, software engineering manager and more. Using this example we will show how a product line is designed, and how product variants can be derived automatically.
The strategy encompasses organizational management, technical. A software product line is a set of softwareintensive systems sharing a common, managed set of features that satisfy specific needs of a particular market or mission, and that are developed from a common set of core assets in a prescribed way, according to the definition used by the software engineering institute sei clements01. Inreality, this linear flow is rarely found in practice. A software product line is a set of software products that share a common set of features. The book provides guidelines on each area and how to achieve institutionalization of your ple process. Product launches can be hectic, and can easily go haywire if you dont plan them properly. Software engineering practices area, organizational or technical management. Most practice areas describe activities that are essential for any successful software development, not just software product lines. Software product line practice seeks to achieve a number of goals including reduced costs, improved time to market, and improved quality of the products belonging to the product line. Software product line engineering has gained considerable momentum in recent years, both in industry and in academia. A key motivation for developing software product lines is the savings achieved through increased software reuse.
The report presents the management of the product line, especially the. For example, configuration management is a practice area that applies to any software. Software product lines the journal of object technology. In many respects, stateofthepractice climate models have indeed evolved to resemble software product lines. The software product line strategy defines specific tasks for the organizational management, technical management, and software engineering aspects of product production. Ple is important because organizations that practice it are experiencing remarkable strategic business and technical benefits. This article describes how this is done in practice, using the example of a product line of meteorological data systems. Youre going to launch a new product, but youre not sure how to get started. A classification of product sampling for software product lines mahsa varshosaz,1 mustafa alhajjaji,2 thomas thum,3 tobias runge,3 mohammad reza mousavi,4,1 and ina schaefer3 1 halmstad university, sweden 2 puresystems gmbh, germany 3 tu braunschweig, germany 4 university of leicester, uk abstract the analysis of software product lines is.
Get a comprehensive business management solution with. There are essential product line activities and practices areas. Software product lines a software product line is a set of softwareintensive systems that share a common, managed set of features satisfying the specific. This content is no longer being updated or maintained. Softwareproductline engineering has gained considerable momentum in recent years, both in industry and in academia. Software product lines course the software product line spl approach to software development promises significant improvements in time to market, cost, and reliability, through the system identification and exploitation of commonalities and variations in software systems the approach promotes asset re use throughout the software life cycle, and facilitates product customisation spl.
A software product line is a family of systems that share a common set of core technical assets, with preplanned extensions and variations to address the needs of specific customers or market segments. Software product line article about software product. An effective quality strategy for a software product line requires both static and dynamic analysis techniques. Practices and patterns clements, paul, northrop, linda. The book has a great patterns catalog, software product line practice patterns. But adopting a product line approach to software is both a technical and a business decision that involves many challenges. Given the rapid evolution of technology, some content, steps, or illustrations may have changed. This presentation will introduce the essential activities and underlying practice areas of software product line development. A software product line is a set of softwareintensive systems that share a common, managed set of features satisfying the specific needs of a particular market segment or mission and that are developed from a common set of core assets in a prescribed way. A framework for software product line practice, version 5. This tutorial introduces the essential activities and underlying practice areas of software product line development. A software product line is a set of software intensive systems sharing a common, managed set of features that satisfy specific needs of a particular market or mission, and that are developed from a common set of core assets in a prescribed way, according to the definition used by the software engineering institute sei clements01. The sei framework for software product line practice is a conceptual framework that describes the essential activities and twentynine practice areas necessary.
Most of these practice areas are applied during singlesystem development as well, but take on a new dimension in a product line context. This book breaks down the three ple practice areas of software engineering, technical management, and organizational management and describes each in great detail. The increasing adoption of software product lines practices in industry has yielded decreased implementation costs, reduced time to market and improved quality of derived products. Examples of benefits include faster time to market up to 10x, reduced cost for building and delivering a product up to 10x, increased product line scalability up to 5x, and increased product quality up to 10x. The model driven paradigm is offering suitable results in some areas and the test phase. Introduction to the seis software product line framework. Software organizations of all types and sizes are discovering that when skillfully implemented. Product lines are, of course, nothing new in manufacturing. A software product line spl implies a formal procedure for designing the modules based on predicting how they can be reused to solve a variety of problems. Introduction to software product lines springerlink. I fully expect that software product lines in action will become one of the foundational references of this quicklyevolving field. The software product line strategy is a business strategy that uses. A software product line is a set of software intensive systems sharing a common, managed set of features, that satisfy the specific needs of a particular market segment or mission and that are developed from a common set of core assets in a prescribed way. Product management is an interdisciplinary role that reaches across teams to plan, design, and continuously bring better products to market.
Software product lines elearning producing a set of related products as a product line has allowed organizations to achieve increased quality and significant reductions in cost and time to market. Product lines usuallyevolve continuously, even after the first product variants have been defined and delivered to customers. Software product lines department of computer science. Jan 16, 2016 a software product line is a family of products designed to take advantage of their common aspects and predicted variabilitys. Long a standard practice in traditional manufacturing, the concept of product lines is relatively new to the software industry.
318 1389 560 584 121 491 1552 708 940 213 175 395 1180 242 160 1309 1456 999 1555 227 429 1389 1321 719 62 576 68 132 1355 535 707 338 184 527 594