A software product line is a family of systems that share a common set of core. I fully expect that software product lines in action will become one of the foundational references of this quicklyevolving field. 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. The software product line practice was designed to manage software products, and their commonalities were designed to maximize the benefits to. A key motivation for developing software product lines is the savings achieved through increased software reuse.
Since then, the academic website has been visited by numerous researchers and research groups worldwide thereby helping to advance the software. Ple is important because organizations that practice it are experiencing remarkable strategic business and technical benefits. Introduction to the seis software product line framework. Inreality, this linear flow is rarely found in practice. Software product lines spls, or software product line development, refers to software engineering methods, tools and techniques for creating a collection of similar software systems from a shared set of software assets using a common means of production the carnegie mellon software engineering institute defines a software product line as a set of softwareintensive systems that share a.
Product lines have been used by the manufacturing industry for a long time to reduce costs and increase productivity by exploiting commonalties between products. Softwareproductline engineering has gained considerable momentum in recent years, both in industry and in academia. A framework for software product line practice, version 5. A systematic mapping study of software product lines testing. Product lines usuallyevolve continuously, even after the first product variants have been defined and delivered to customers. For example, configuration management is a practice area that applies to any software. Boeing builds one, and so do ford, dell, and even mcdonalds. Software engineering practices area, organizational or technical management. Engineering and business results in 60 days, proceedings, splc 2008, limerick, pp.
Introduction to the emerging practice of software product. Product launches can be hectic, and can easily go haywire if you dont plan them properly. Most of these practice areas are applied during singlesystem development as well, but take on a new dimension in a product line context. 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. Since then, the academic website has been visited by numerous researchers and research. Software product lines software product lines in practice medium. Our example product line will contain different products for entry and display of meteorological data on a pc. 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. A software product line is a family of products designed to take advantage of their common aspects and predicted variabilitys. 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. These commonalities among software systems are embodied in artifacts called core assets.
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. The book has a great patterns catalog, software product line practice patterns. 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. Must contain one character from three of the following groups. Jan 16, 2016 a software product line is a family of products designed to take advantage of their common aspects and predicted variabilitys. Our offerings for marketing, sales and product leaders. Software product lines product line engineering ple traces its roots as a field of study to software product line engineering. Practices and patterns clements, paul, northrop, linda. This article describes how this is done in practice, using the example of a product line of meteorological data systems. Software product lines are as much about business practices as they.
This article provides a list of best practices for improving the success of your software development projects. 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. 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. Software organizations of all types and sizes are discovering that. 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. Youre going to launch a new product, but youre not sure how to get started. The software engineering institute has identified 29 practice areas that represent the skills needed by an organization adopting the product line strategy. Software product line article about software product. Software product lines spls, or software product line development, refers to software engineering methods, tools and techniques for creating a collection of similar software systems from a shared set of software assets using a common means of production. 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. Software product lines have emerged as a new software development paradigm of great importance. 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. Software product lines 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. In many respects, stateofthepractice climate models have indeed evolved to resemble software product lines.
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. Although these practice areas may be required for engineering. This presentation will introduce the essential activities and underlying practice areas of software product line development. In summary software product lines epitomize the concept of strategic, planned reuse. Start selling our comprehensive solution thats built for business. This definition is consistent with the definition traditionally given for any product line. Some of the practice areas defined for the product line concepts such as. This content is no longer being updated or maintained.
Core assets are reusable and can be any of the following. Get a comprehensive business management solution with. The primary distinction between software product line engineering and conventional software engineering is the presence of variationin some or all of the software assets. Krueger, dale churchett, ross buhrdorf, homeaways transition to software product line practice. Using this example we will show how a product line is designed, and how product variants can be derived automatically. 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. Applying software product line principles in a product development. Given the rapid evolution of technology, some content, steps, or illustrations may have changed. The product line concept is about more than a new technology. 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. Long a standard practice in traditional manufacturing, the concept of product lines is relatively new to the software industry. In this approach, as in singlesystem development, testing is essential to uncover defects.
A classification of product sampling for software product lines. This tutorial introduces the essential activities and underlying practice areas of software product line development. Software product lines department of computer science. 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. Software organizations of all types and sizes are discovering that when skillfully implemented. 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 line article about software product line. There are essential product line activities and practices areas. Introduction to software product lines springerlink. 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 report presents the management of the product line, especially the. 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. The software product line strategy is a business strategy that uses.
Software product line engineering with feature models. 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 software product line strategy defines specific tasks for the organizational management, technical management, and software engineering aspects of product production. These goals will only be achieved if quality attributes, such as correctness and reliability, are. 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. 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. Because of this, climate models are akin to software product lines spls which can produce a range of individual products from the same codebase.
The software product line approach is a strategy for producing softwareintensive products. 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. Software product lines represent perhaps the most exciting paradigm shift in software development since the advent of highlevel programming languages. A product line is a set of products that together address a particular market segment or fulfill a particular mission. 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 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. Feature models kan90, cza00 are frequently used for this. A practice area is the body of work or set of activities. A software product line is a set of software products that share a common set of features.
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. Product lines are, of course, nothing new in manufacturing. In the early stages of a software productline lifecycle, software assets contain variation points that representunbound options about how the software will behave. Software engineering at oxford software product lines. A framework for software product line practice version 4. Most practice areas describe activities that are essential for any successful software development, not just software product lines. A systematic testing approach can save significant development effort, increase product quality and. The basis of sple is the explicit modelling of what is common and what differs between product variants.
The book provides guidelines on each area and how to achieve institutionalization of your ple process. Software ip specialists software innovations are protectable not just with software patents, but also with other areas of intellectual property ip law. The software engineering institute has identified twentynine issues or practice areas that affect an organizations success in fielding a software product line. 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. Software product line engineering has gained considerable momentum in recent years, both in industry and in academia. 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. 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. 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.
Its the most comprehensive treatment of product line practice in existence today. Smaller footprint, better performance, higher test coverage, improved quality, faster time to market, lower cost maintenance lg industrial. 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. 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. Software product lines a software product line is a set of softwareintensive systems that share a common, managed set of features satisfying the specific. Software product line spl engineering refers to the engineering and management techniques to create, evolve, and sustain a software product line. The model driven paradigm is offering suitable results in some areas and the test phase. 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 classification of product sampling for software product.
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. This book breaks down the three ple practice areas of software engineering, technical management, and organizational management and describes each in great detail. Software product line engineering sple offers a solution to these not quite new, but increasingly challenging, problems cle01. Software product lines the journal of object technology. An effective quality strategy for a software product line requires both static and dynamic analysis techniques. The strategy encompasses organizational management, technical. The role evolved out of a set of responsibilities that traditionally fell to lead developers and engineers. This document describes a framework for product line development.
Product management is an interdisciplinary role that reaches across teams to plan, design, and continuously bring better products to market. 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. However, product line practice in the software industry is a relatively new concept. 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. But adopting a product line approach to software is both a technical and a business decision that involves many challenges. The software product line practice was designed to manage software products, and their commonalities were designed to maximize the benefits to the organization. The sei framework for software product line practice is a conceptual framework that describes the essential activities and twentynine practice areas necessary. Producing a set of related products as a product line has allowed organizations to achieve increased. Software product lines challenge traditional analysis techniques, such as. Apply to product manager, product line manager, software engineering manager and more.
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