The Convergence of Struggles! Reusability Assessment of Inner‐Source Components for Product Lines

Abstract

ABSTRACTInner source is establishing open source‐like collaborations within an organization. Product Line Engineering (PLE) is the approach for engineering a related product portfolio in an efficient manner, taking advantage of products’ similarities while managing their differences. These two well‐documented approaches propose smart techniques for reuse, but they use different terminology. A language characteristic is to be polysemic and polymorphic. Indeed, PLE and inner source do not use the same words to refer to equivalent concepts. This could badly affect project performance when evolving in a multi‐domain context. What if there was a way to better integrate PLE, inner source, modeling, data management, hardware and software engineering, and integration, verification, validation, and qualification (IVVQ) through the similarity concept?This paper shows it is possible to build a common way to assess the components (also called building blocks) contributing to a product line, thanks to a process to determine the component maturity levels using the similarity approach. After detailing the commonalities between the inner source and PLE domains, we present the Inner Sourcing Process Maturity Level (ISPML) as a key engineering practice. Why is it important for engineering? If engineers reuse components defined by their engineering assets, it is important to have a formalized, common way to do this across the company to integrate reusable multi‐domain assets with a certain confidence level. This paper introduces a simple method for multi‐domain organizations to better determine whether sharing an engineering asset is favorable or not.