 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
||||||||||||||
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
Asking today, what were the major points in introducing PLE at MARKET MAKER – or possibly any other small and medium size enterprise (SME) - a short number of answers exist:
- Think into the future: PLE forces an SME to plan product development years ahead. There is not a single (“the”) product idea to carry forward business, but rather PLE is reasoning about company assets in terms of domain knowledge and competence. A dramatic shift in thinking for most SMEs.
- Pay attention to quality: PLE creates core assets to become part of almost every product. Changing the software might impact every installation. Hence you have to define a clear, crisp component interface, and test it after each build.
- Take care about your architecture: a suitable, clear architecture is a must. Simplicity pays off. And don’t be afraid to modify it according to new insights.
- Build the team: an SME heavily relies on good people. PLE additionally requires self-driven, well-educated software engineers. Not every group of developers may become a PLE team.
- Maintain the domain: it is much simpler to create products in the same domain rather than creating the same product in different domains. Either your technical domain (e.g., web portals) is the same, or the application domain (e.g., financial applications).
From MARKET MAKER’s experience, it looks like introducing PLE into an SME is not a problem but an endeavor. It does not require huge knowledge of methodological background. PLE seems to put an emphasis on already known principles and ideas. Nothing is special, just a level more complex.
Additional information on the MARKET MAKER software product line story can be found in the following:
- Software Product Lines: Practices and Patterns, by Paul Clements and Linda Northrop, SEI Series in Software Engineering, Addison Wesley, 2002, pages 485-512.
- Klaus Schmid and Martin Verlage, The Economic Impact of Product Line Adoption and Evolution, IEEE Software, Special Issue on Software Product Lines, July/August 2002, Vol. 10, No. 4, pages 50-57.
Credits: Part of the work described here was conducted within the Eureka 2023 Programme, ITEA (Information Technology for European Advancement) projects 99005 ESAPS (Engineering Software Architectures, Processes, and Platforms for System-Families) and ip000004 CAFÉ (from Concepts to Application in system-Family Engineering). The support by the German Research Ministry (BMBF) in this project context is gratefully acknowledged. MARKET MAKER would like to thank all partners of the ESAPS and CAFÉ consortia for their cooperation.
< Previous page . . 1 2 . . Next Success Story >
 |
|
|
Development Tools
and Methods for Software Product Lines Special Seminar from Telelogic and BigLever Software. MDD for Software Product Lines |
|