Feature selection: all components

With the ambition to bring all products in a configurable product base, the scope for feature selection is now extended to all components, including the old, common and low-level components. Of course, for all components considered for inclusion in the product family, a positive cost benefit evaluation should be available. The ultimate goal remains to reduce development and maintenance effort, improve time-to-market and increase integration between different products in the portfolio.

Architecture harmonisation: revolutionary architecture adoption

At this stage in the product family adoption, the products that were part of the initial adoption have evolved through several iterations of architecture harmonisation. However, new products interested in joining the product family initiative need to go through a revolutionary architecture adoption process. Reusing the product family components will require the new products to make substantial changes to their architecture.

Organization: component unit

Even if up to now, no component units were created, the product family is, at this point, so embedded in the R&D organization that it is no longer feasible to proceed without component units. However, as discussed below, after initial taxation based funding, these component units should be funding through licensing or royalty fees. The aim is to make sure that component units are exposed to market pressures from within and outside the organization.

Funding: licensing/royalty

As discussed, as the R&D organization instantiates component units, it is important for these units to be exposed to market pressures. A taxation based model easily leads to component units that are more concerned with creating a ‘perfect’ component than with the needs of their customers.

Shared component scoping: encompassing component

A logical consequence of the customer focus of component units is the attention towards minimizing the integration problems of the component in specific products. In this stage one can typically identify a shift from shared components extended by product teams to shared components prepared by component units for easy integration, i.e. the encompassing component model.