Andreas Birk

Product line engineering, the state of the practice

Software product lines can be very powerful for ensuring quality, economic efficiency, and manageability of software system families. SPLs are relevant to large industrial enterprises that want to better manage their software-intensive systems development. They can also provide small start-ups with unique and striking business models. However, SPL technology can be difficult to implement and maintain. A work group comprising five organizations has investigated and compared SPL practices. The results detail the state of SPL practice.

Challenges for requirements engineering and management in software product line development

Development of software product lines is particularly complex, raising specific and advanced challenges for requirements engineering and management. This paper gives an overview of these challenges, as they were identified in three related investigations that involved several industrial software product line organizations.

Using Requirements Management Tools in Software Product Line Engineering: The State of the Practice

A software product line oriented approach to developing systems has an impact on the development process as a whole. Although the basic idea of product lines is simple, systematic implementation of the approach is a challenging task. In fact, todays software product lines have such complex variability that their handling must be supported by tools, otherwise a systematic approach would not be possible. The same holds for requirements management of product lines. On the basis of specific industrial scenarios the paper derives important requirements that have to be observed if requirements management tools are to be usefully applied to product lines. Current requirements management tools are evaluated on the basis of these requirements in their daily industrial use. The presented requirements can indicate the future direction of tool development and method research.