Software product lines (SPLs), or software

product line Product may refer to: Business * Product (business), an item that serves as a solution to a specific consumer problem. * Product (project management), a deliverable or set of deliverables that contribute to a business solution Mathematics * Produ ...

development, refers to

software engineering Software engineering is a systematic engineering approach to software development. A software engineer is a person who applies the principles of software engineering to design, develop, maintain, test, and evaluate computer software. The term '' ...

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 means of production is a term which describes land, labor and capital that can be used to produce products (such as goods or services); however, the term can also refer to anything that is used to produce products. It can also be used as an ...

. The Carnegie Mellon

Software Engineering Institute The Software Engineering Institute (SEI) is an American research and development center headquartered in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Its activities cover cybersecurity, software assurance, software engineering and acquisition, and component capabil ...

defines a ''software product line'' as "a set of software-intensive 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."

Description

Manufacturers have long employed analogous engineering techniques to create a product line of similar products using a common factory that assembles and configures parts designed to be reused across the product line. For example, automotive manufacturers can create unique variations of one

car model The model of a car is its design, in the context of the manufacturer's range or series of cars. Different models are distinguishable by technology, components, underpinnings, and/or style and appearance. The methods used to categorise cars into ...

using a single pool of carefully designed parts and a factory specifically designed to configure and assemble those parts. The characteristic that distinguishes software product lines from previous efforts is predictive versus opportunistic

software reuse In software development (and computer programming in general), code reuse, also called software reuse, is the use of existing software, or software knowledge, to build new software, following the reusability principles. Code reuse may be achiev ...

. Rather than put general

software components Component-based software engineering (CBSE), also called component-based development (CBD), is a branch of software engineering that emphasizes the separation of concerns with respect to the wide-ranging functionality available throughout a give ...

into a library in the hope that opportunities for reuse will arise, software product lines only call for software artifacts to be created when reuse is predicted in one or more products in a well defined product line. Recent advances in the software product line field have demonstrated that narrow and strategic application of these concepts can yield

order of magnitude An order of magnitude is an approximation of the logarithm of a value relative to some contextually understood reference value, usually 10, interpreted as the base of the logarithm and the representative of values of magnitude one. Logarithmic dis ...

improvements in software engineering capability. The result is often a discontinuous jump in competitive business advantage, similar to that seen when manufacturers adopt

mass production Mass production, also known as flow production or continuous production, is the production of substantial amounts of standardized products in a constant flow, including and especially on assembly lines. Together with job production and batch ...

and

mass customization In marketing, manufacturing, call centre operations, and management, mass customization makes use of flexible computer-aided systems to produce custom output. Such systems combine the low unit costs of mass production processes with the flexibility ...

paradigms.

Development

While early software product line methods at the genesis of the field provided the best software engineering improvement metrics seen in four decades, the latest generation of software product line methods and tools are exhibiting even greater improvements. New generation methods are extending benefits beyond product creation into

maintenance Maintenance may refer to: Biological science * Maintenance of an organism * Maintenance respiration Non-technical maintenance * Alimony, also called ''maintenance'' in British English * Champerty and maintenance, two related legal doctrine ...

and

evolution Evolution is change in the heritable characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. These characteristics are the expressions of genes, which are passed on from parent to offspring during reproduction. Variation ...

, lowering the overall complexity of product line development, increasing the scalability of product line portfolios, and enabling organizations to make the transition to software product line practice with orders of magnitude less time, cost and effort. Recently the concepts of software product lines have been extended to cover systems and software engineering holistically. This is reflected by the emergence of industry standard families like ISO 265xx on systems and software engineering practices for product lines..

References

{{Reflist

External links

Software Product Lines Essentials, page 19. Carnegie Mellon

Web Site
Software Products Lines
Community Web Site and Discussion Forums
Introduction to the Emerging Practice of Software Product Line Development

AMPLE Project

Software Product Line Engineering Course, B. Tekinerdogan, Bilkent University
Software project management Software industry

Description

Development

See also

References

External links