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