Introduction to Software Product Lines

Abstract

Software product lines have emerged as a new software development paradigm of great importance. A software product line is a set of software intensive systems sharing a common, managed set of features, and that are developed in a disciplined fashion using a common set of core assets. Organizations developing a portfolio of products as a software product line are experiencing order-of-magnitude improvements in cost, time to market, staff productivity, and quality of the deployed products.

This tutorial introduces the essential activities and underlying practice areas of software product line development. It is aimed at those in an organization who are in a position to influence the decision to adopt a product line approach, and those in a position to carry out that decision.  Anyone who can act as a technology change agent will benefit from this tutorial. The tutorial reviews the basic concepts of software product lines, discusses the costs and benefits of product line adoption, introduces the SEI’s Framework for Software Product Line Practice, and describes approaches to applying the practices of the framework.

Presenter: Patrick Donohoe

Patrick Donohoe is a Senior Member of the Technical Staff at the Software Engineering Institute, working in the Product Line Systems Program. His current interests are analysis modeling and production planning for software product lines. He has participated in several product line technical probes and architecture evaluations and is also an instructor in the SEI’s Software Product Line Curriculum.