Ple is a set of processes, methods, and tools to develop a set of systems from a common set of engineering assets that maximizes reuse while. Product line engineering ple traces its roots as a field of study to software product line engineering. Thinking of your product line in terms of the features offered. Software product lines, or software product line development, refers to software engineering methods, tools and techniques for creating a collection of similar software systems from a shared set of software assets using a common means of production. Software product lines course the software product line spl approach to software development promises significant improvements in time to market, cost, and reliability, through the system identification and exploitation of commonalities and variations in software systems the approach promotes asset re use throughout the software life cycle, and facilitates product. Although the term software product line engineering is becoming more widely known, there is still uncertainty among developers about how it would apply in their own development context. Software product line definition of software product line. Software area editor david weiss discusses the benefits of using software product line engineering to produce software families. System security in product line engineering beth wilson. A software product line is a set of software products that share a common set of features. This person is in charge of determining what stays and what goes. The software product line practice was designed to manage software products, and their commonalities were designed to maximize the benefits to the organization. This process is known as productfamily engineering.
A product line is defined as a family of similar products or systems with variations in features and functions. Software product line spl engineering refers to the engineering and management. Whats the difference between a software product and a. Applying software product line principles in a product development. A software product line or program family consists of a set of similar software products that rely on a common code base.
Requirements definition document for a software product line. Software, when made for a specific requirement is called software product. Software product line engineering is an approach to costefficiently derive tailored products to markets and customers, utilizing common components and services in a planned manner. Application software can be a single program or a collection of small programs. Product line engineering is an evolving discipline that is using new tools and techniques to facilitate the manufacturing of the every day products we enjoy. Marketing executives believe that product lines give companies a competitive advantage. Biglever is committed to bringing you valuable insight and informational resources regarding product line engineering ple concepts and tools, leadingedge ple approaches, and the key benefits that ple offers your organization. The tasks for a particular product line typically include the development of a common platform, the definition of the product lines architecture, and the automated.
Requirements engineering is at the core of software product line engineering. Product line engineering an overview sciencedirect topics. Product line definition and meaning collins english. Software product lines challenge traditional analysis techniques, such as. Software engineering stack exchange is a question and answer site for professionals, academics, and students working within the systems development life cycle. Application software is intended to perform certain tasks. Although the term software product line engineering is becoming more widely known, there is still uncertaintyamong developers about how it would apply in their own development context. Versions, variants and all the rest product line engineering. A product line is a group of related products under a single brand sold by the same company. Software product line spl engineering refers to the engineering and management techniques to create, evolve, and sustain a software product line. Sep 06, 2016 a product can exist within another product. Iso 26580 standard methods and tools for the featurebased approach to systems and software product line engineering. It is the application of engineering principles to software development. Understand the definition of a software product line spl.
Software product line engineering can also enable rapid market entry and flexible. Systems and software product line engineering, abbreviated as product line engineering or ple for short, is defined as the engineering of a portfolio of related products using a shared set of engineering assets and an efficient means of production. Software engineers produce lengthy design documents using computeraided software engineering tools. Product lines have been applied to other engineering fields for decades, while being quite recently introduced in software engineering. The success of the software product line strategy is due, at least partially, to its comprehensive nature. A software product line is a set of softwareintensive systems sharing a common, managed set of features that satisfy the specific needs of a particular market segment or mission and that are developed from a common set of core assets in a prescribed way 4. Understand the software product line engineering process and three approaches. The software product line strategy defines specific tasks for the organizational management, technical management, and software engineering aspects of product production. The carnegie mellon software engineering institute defines a software product line as a set of softwareintensive systems that share a common, managed set of features satisfying the specific needs of a particular market segment or mission and that a. Lines were formalized by the cmu sei 2, and they define a software product lines as. The names of the physical items which constitute the baseline e. Jul 24, 2019 the whole software design process has to be formally managed long before the first line of code is written. Aug 09, 2017 product line engineering ple is a way to engineer a portfolio of related products in an efficient manner, taking advantage of products similarities while managing their differences.
The product manager pm is responsible for the strategy, roadmap, and feature definition of a product or product line. Unlike conventional software development paradigms that aim to develop single systems, sple considers the development of a family of software systems. Software engineering is an engineering branch associated with development of software product using welldefined scientific principles, methods and. A software product line, also known as software family, is a set of softwareintensive systems sharing a common, managed set of features that satisfy the specific needs of a particular market segment or mission and that are developed from a common set. Software project management has wider scope than software engineering process as it involves. A product line is a group of related products produced by one manufacturer, for example. Oct 04, 2018 software engineering is the process of analyzing user needs and designing, constructing, and testing end user applications that will satisfy these needs through the use of software programming languages. A software product line is a set of softwareintensive systems sharing a common, managed set of features that satisfy the specific needs of a particular market or mission and that are developed from a common set of core assets in a prescribed way. For software engineers, that means coming up with a software solution and being able to code it up properly. Software product line engineering has gained considerable momentum in recent years, both in industry and in academia.
Software product lines spls, or software product line development, refers to software engineering methods, tools and techniques for creating a collection of similar software systems from a shared set of software assets using a common means of production. Inthis article we tackle this problem by describing the design and automatedderivation of the product variants of a software product line using an easy to. Clements and northrop define a software product line as follows clements 01. A software product line is a set of softwareintensive systems that share a common, managed set of features satisfying the specific needs of a particular market segment or. Concepts and guidelines of feature modeling for product line. Requirements engineering in feature oriented software. A software product line is a family of products designed to take advantage of their common aspects and predicted variabilitys. Requirements engineering for software product lines. Incose product line engineering international working group.
Requirements definition document for a software product. It starts with a domain analysis phase to identify commonalities and variability among spl members. Softwareproductline engineering aims at providing techniques for e cient development of software product lines czarnecki and eisenecker 2000. When a company has many product lines and groups them together, it creates a product mix collins dictionary has the following definition of the term. The software product line is described in the following manner.
Each version represents an incremental attempt to capture the latest information about successful software product line practices. When a business has a competitive advantage, it has an edge over its rivals. I would like to learn how to write a software product definition. Software product line engineering sple offers a solution to these not quite new, but increasingly challenging, problems cle01. In most companies, the product line manager supervises a product line. A product line is defined as a family of similar products or systems with variations in features. Software product line engineering is a paradigm to develop software product lines and as such supports reuse, productivity and quality of the systems. Cheng2, geri georg3, nicolas guelfi1, paul istoan1,4, gunter mussbacher5 1lassy research team, university of luxembourg, luxembourg alfredo.
Feature models kan90, cza00 are frequently used for this. Software engineering at oxford software product lines. Companies sell multiple product lines under their various brands. Software product line definition of software product. Engineering on the other hand, is all about developing products, using welldefined, scientific principles and methods. Application software can be a single program or a collection of small. However, its comprehensive nature also means that the effort to. Software product line engineering has proven to be the paradigm for developing a diversity of software products and softwareintensive systems in shorter time, at lower cost, and with higher. Ple in context drew stovall biglever insight magazine junejuly 2020 issue.
Software is a general term for the various kinds of program s used to operate computer s and related devices. Software product line engineering how is software product line engineering abbreviated. Whats the difference between a software product and a platform. A pen, for example, may have replaceable ink cartridges. Software engineering is the process of analyzing user needs and designing, constructing, and testing end user applications that will satisfy these needs through the use of software programming languages. Domain engineering consists of collecting, organizing, and storing past experiences in building systems in the form of reusable assets and providing an adequate means for reusing them for building new systems.
The aim of the domain engineering process is to define and realise the commonality and the variability of the soft ware product line. Mar 17, 2020 such companies try to find efficiencies in product line commonalities while also embracing the variation during the engineering process. With explanations of fundamental concepts further illuminated by realworld experience, this book spells. The software engineer then converts the design documents into design specification documents, which are used to design code. Mar 17, 2015 so there is evidently a difference between a software product and a platform and there is evidently a new definition of what we should consider a technology platform to be. To minimize effort for this, often tools supporting automated derivation are used here. Software product lines are quite common in our daily lives, but before a product family can be successfully established, an. Productfamily engineering pfe, also known as productline engineering, is a synonym for domain engineering created by the software engineering institute, a term coined by james neighbors in his 1980 dissertation at university of california, irvine. Systems and software product line engineering, abbreviated as product line engineering or ple for short, refers to the engineering of a portfolio of related products using a shared set of engineering assets and an efficient means of production. Salary estimates are based on 30 salaries submitted anonymously to glassdoor by product line engineer employees.
Paul clements is a senior member of the technical staff at the sei, where he works on software architecture and product line engineering. A software product line is a portfolio of similar software based systems and products produced from a shared set of software assets using a common means of production. In software product line engineering, product management activities, in particular, product definition and certain aspects of portfolio management, are subsumed under the. A framework for software product line practice, version 5. One orthogonal an uml class variability model diagram a state machine etc. This can be accomplished by reusing components, applying proper change management across different variants, and leveraging automation. The system software is usually written in the c programming language. Product line engineering ple is a way to engineer a portfolio of related products in an efficient manner, taking advantage of products similarities while managing their differences. Strategic reuse helps you gain efficiencies across the entire product development lifecycle. The basis of sple is the explicit modelling of what is common and what differs between product variants. What is software product line engineering igi global. Software product line engineering with feature models.
Software product lines, and the efforts to characterize their successes, gave us early and longstanding approaches to product line engineering that we characterize as first generation approaches. Product engineering is the process of innovating, designing, developing, testing and deploying a software product. Software product lines are quite common in our daily lives, but before a product family can be successfully established, an extensive process has to be followed. Engineering includes all the activities involved in planning, producing, delivering, deploying, sustaining, and even retiring products.
Engineering definition, the art or science of making practical application of the knowledge of pure sciences, as physics or chemistry, as in the construction of engines, bridges, buildings, mines, ships, and chemical plants. A software product line is a set of software intensive systems sharing a common, managed set of features that satisfy the specific needs of a particular market or mission and that are developed from a common set of core assets in a prescribed way. Customers who already know the brand will be more willing to buy from their new line. Nov 03, 2016 in this case it is product planning, but the job and skill set more closely fit the definition of an engineering project manager, with very little weight put on exploring the market to match. Baseline configuration management software engineering. Similar to requirements engineering for a single system 6 7 the success of a software product line highly depends on the correct understanding of the context in which the software product line will be used, the understanding of the. He is the author of five books and more than three dozen papers on these and other topics. Filter by location to see product line engineer salaries in your area. Product line definition of product line by the free. During domain design, the product line architecture is defined. Examples of application software include office suites, gaming applications, database systems and educational software.
Productfamily engineering, also known as productline engineering, is a synonym for domain engineering created by the software engineering institute, a term coined by james neighbors in his 1980 dissertation at university of california, irvine. Product management organizational structure in tech. By considering a product line portfolio as a single entity to. Half of engineering is making sure youre building the right product and have the ability to actually build it. Product family engineering pfe, also known as product line engineering, is a synonym for domain engineering created by the software engineering institute, a term coined by james neighbors in his 1980 dissertation at university of california, irvine. Software product line an overview sciencedirect topics. Therefore i am looking for online materials or books which would help me to learn more about this topic.
This definition is consistent with the definition traditionally given for any product line. Software product line engineering has proven to be the paradigm for developing a diversity of software products and softwareintensive systems in. Software product line a software product line spl is a set of softwareintensive systems that share a common, managed set of features satisfying the speci. The term hardware describes the physical aspects of computers and related devices. These new tools promise to help manufacturers deliver new products and variations on existing products more efficiently, with higher quality and faster time to market. This lesson looks at the steps of a functional design in the. A software product line, also known as software family, is a set of software intensive systems sharing a common, managed set of features that satisfy the specific needs of a particular market segment or mission and that are developed from a common set of core assets in a prescribed way 6. The sei works with industry, academic institutions and the united states government to improve the performance and reliability of computer systems by managing pilot. The software engineering institute sei is a research, development and training center involved in computer software and network security. In contrast to simple programming, software engineering is used for. A software product line is a set of softwarereliant systems that share a common, managed set of features satisfying a particular market or mission area, and are built from a common set of core assets in a prescribed way. A production engineer typically has a wide knowledge of engineering practices and is aware of the management challenges related to production.
Pdf a framework for software product line engineering. Production engineering is a combination of manufacturing technology, engineering sciences with management science. A software product line is a portfolio of similar softwarebased systems and products produced from a shared set of software assets using a common means of production. So there is evidently a difference between a software product and a platform and there is evidently a new definition of what we should consider a technology platform to be. The scope of this international standard is to provide the terms and definitions specific to software and systems product line engineering and management. Software product lines is the culmination of an intensive investigation, undertaken by the software engineering institute sei at carnegie mellon, into how leadingedge software development organizations have retooled for product lines. A company that makes telecommunications software may introduce a new app for tracking a cell phone. Software engineering is an engineering branch associated with development of software product using welldefined scientific principles, methods and procedures.
Mar 31, 2020 the system software is usually written in the c programming language. In this article we tackle this problem by describing the design and automated derivation of the product variants of a software product line using an easy to. Jul 04, 2008 in product line engineering the derivation is a central part since changes to a product line asset for example when fixing a bug often requires the recreation of all derived products including the changed assets. The outcome of software engineering is an efficient and reliable software product. The company manufacturing and selling the chair may have purchased fully milled legs from another company. Such companies try to find efficiencies in product line commonalities while also embracing the variation during the engineering process. Product line definition of product line by the free dictionary. Softwareproductline engineering has gained considerable momentum in recent years, both in industry and in academia.
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