New Methods in Software Product Line Development

Abstract

A new generation of software product line success stories is being driven by a new generation of methods, tools and techniques. While early software product line case studies at the genesis of the field revealed some of the best software engineering improvement metrics seen in four decades, the latest generation of software product line success stories exhibit even greater improvements, extending benefits beyond product creation into maintenance and evolution, 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. This paper describes some of the best methods from the industry's most recent software product line successes.