December 2006 - Vol. 49 No. 12

The current trend of globalization is pressuring industries to explore ways to diversify and deliver their products in a timely and efficient manner. Over the last decade, the software product line (SPL) has emerged as one of the most promising software development paradigms for drastically increasing the productivity of IT-related industries, enabling them to handle […]

Mapping the technical and business activities and steps required for successful organizational adoption.

Examining the benefits of next-generation SPL methods.

Addressing the challenges involved in broadening the scope of software product families.

A feature is an increment in product functionality. Features are commonly used to specify and distinguish products in product lines [8]. They communicate product functions in an easy-to-understand way, capture functionalities concisely, and help delineate the commonalities and variabilities of a domain. Features can have attributes (much like graphical user interface components can be customized […]

An example from the Swedish Defense Industry.

Implementing feature-oriented variability modeling throughout the life cycle.

Developing mechanisms for mapping features to analysis models.

The goal of this article is to call attention to an area that is yet not sufficiently researched: product management for software product lines (SPLs). Many companies developing standardized software products have adopted product management as a function that coordinates research and development, marketing, sales, and software development. Even though this function coordinates all of […]

Establishing effective change management practices to prevent uncontrolled evolution of the product platform.

Using formal verification techniques to verify designs within a product line.

Exploring principles and potential solutions.

On the one hand, the field of software product lines (SPLs), as described in the articles in this section, covers all the software development life cycle necessary to develop a family of products where the derivation of concrete products is made systematically and rapidly [10]. On the other hand, agent-oriented software engineering (AOSE) is a […]

In reusing common organizational assets, the software product line (SPL) provides substantial business opportunities for reducing the unit cost of similar products, improving productivity, reducing time to market, and promoting customer satisfaction [4]. By adopting effective product line practices, return on investment (ROI) becomes increasingly critical in the decision-making process. The majority of SPL cost […]