The term hardware describes the physical aspects of computers and related devices. Paul clements is a senior member of the technical staff at the sei, where he works on software architecture and product line engineering. 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. Versions, variants and all the rest product line engineering. The software engineering institute sei is a research, development and training center involved in computer software and network security. 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. Software product line an overview sciencedirect topics.
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. Iso 26580 standard methods and tools for the featurebased approach to systems and software product line engineering. This lesson looks at the steps of a functional design in the. 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. In most companies, the product line manager supervises a product line. 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. Half of engineering is making sure youre building the right product and have the ability to actually build it. Software product lines are quite common in our daily lives, but before a product family can be successfully established, an. A product line is defined as a family of similar products or systems with variations in features and functions. When a business has a competitive advantage, it has an edge over its rivals.
Understand the software product line engineering process and three approaches. Jul 24, 2019 the whole software design process has to be formally managed long before the first line of code is written. With explanations of fundamental concepts further illuminated by realworld experience, this book spells. Companies sell multiple product lines under their various brands. 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. 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.
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 software product line practice was designed to manage software products, and their commonalities were designed to maximize the benefits to the organization. Product line engineering an overview sciencedirect topics. The software product line strategy defines specific tasks for the organizational management, technical management, and software engineering aspects of product production. Pdf a framework for software product line engineering. Applying software product line principles in a product development. 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. Feature models kan90, cza00 are frequently used for this. 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.
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. 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. 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. 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. 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. Application software can be a single program or a collection of small programs. 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. He is the author of five books and more than three dozen papers on these and other topics.
Software product line definition of software product line. Production engineering is a combination of manufacturing technology, engineering sciences with management science. It starts with a domain analysis phase to identify commonalities and variability among spl members. 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.
This can be accomplished by reusing components, applying proper change management across different variants, and leveraging automation. 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. Software engineering at oxford software product lines. Softwareproductline engineering aims at providing techniques for e cient development of software product lines czarnecki and eisenecker 2000. A software product line or program family consists of a set of similar software products that rely on a common code base. Product lines have been applied to other engineering fields for decades, while being quite recently introduced in software engineering. Whats the difference between a software product and a platform. Each version represents an incremental attempt to capture the latest information about successful software product line practices. Software product line engineering can also enable rapid market entry and flexible.
A software product line is a family of products designed to take advantage of their common aspects and predicted variabilitys. 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. In software product line engineering, product management activities, in particular, product definition and certain aspects of portfolio management, are subsumed under the. Cheng2, geri georg3, nicolas guelfi1, paul istoan1,4, gunter mussbacher5 1lassy research team, university of luxembourg, luxembourg alfredo. Software engineering stack exchange is a question and answer site for professionals, academics, and students working within the systems development life cycle. 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. 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.
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. One orthogonal an uml class variability model diagram a state machine etc. Salary estimates are based on 30 salaries submitted anonymously to glassdoor by product line engineer employees. Requirements engineering for software product lines. The success of the software product line strategy is due, at least partially, to its comprehensive nature. Such companies try to find efficiencies in product line commonalities while also embracing the variation during the engineering process. However, its comprehensive nature also means that the effort to. Therefore i am looking for online materials or books which would help me to learn more about this topic. The product manager pm is responsible for the strategy, roadmap, and feature definition of a product or product line. Customers who already know the brand will be more willing to buy from their new line. The basis of sple is the explicit modelling of what is common and what differs between product variants. I would like to learn how to write a software product definition. Linda northrop is director of the product line systems program at the sei and chaired the first annual international conference on software product. Requirements definition document for a software product.
Software product line engineering has gained considerable momentum in recent years, both in industry and in academia. 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. 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. Filter by location to see product line engineer salaries in your area. Software project management has wider scope than software engineering process as it involves. 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. This process is known as productfamily engineering. A company that makes telecommunications software may introduce a new app for tracking a cell phone. Requirements definition document for a software product line. By considering a product line portfolio as a single entity to. Software product line engineering with feature models. Whats the difference between a software product and a. Mar 17, 2020 such companies try to find efficiencies in product line commonalities while also embracing the variation during the engineering process. The system software is usually written in the c programming language.
Software product line spl engineering refers to the engineering and management techniques to create, evolve, and sustain a software product line. The names of the physical items which constitute the baseline e. During domain design, the product line architecture is defined. 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. The sei works with industry, academic institutions and the united states government to improve the performance and reliability of computer systems by managing pilot. Product line engineering ple traces its roots as a field of study to software product line engineering. 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. Requirements engineering is at the core of software product line engineering. In contrast to simple programming, software engineering is used for. 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. Software engineering is an engineering branch associated with development of software product using welldefined scientific principles, methods and. A product line is a group of related products under a single brand sold by the same company. 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.
To minimize effort for this, often tools supporting automated derivation are used here. 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. The outcome of software engineering is an efficient and reliable software product. Software product line engineering sple offers a solution to these not quite new, but increasingly challenging, problems cle01. Engineering on the other hand, is all about developing products, using welldefined, scientific principles and methods. System security in product line engineering beth wilson. Software, when made for a specific requirement is called software product.
Lines were formalized by the cmu sei 2, and they define a software product lines as. Strategic reuse helps you gain efficiencies across the entire product development lifecycle. 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. Software product line definition of software product. The software product line is described in the following manner. Software product line engineering how is software product line engineering abbreviated. Software product line engineering is a paradigm to develop software product lines and as such supports reuse, productivity and quality of the systems. A framework for software product line practice, version 5. What is software product line engineering igi global.
A software product line is a set of software products that share a common set of features. 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. A production engineer typically has a wide knowledge of engineering practices and is aware of the management challenges related to production. Software engineering is an engineering branch associated with development of software product using welldefined scientific principles, methods and procedures. Softwareproductline engineering has gained considerable momentum in recent years, both in industry and in academia. 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. Software product line spl engineering refers to the engineering and management.
The scope of this international standard is to provide the terms and definitions specific to software and systems product line engineering and management. The software engineer then converts the design documents into design specification documents, which are used to design code. 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. Application software can be a single program or a collection of small. Software product line engineering has proven to be the paradigm for developing a diversity of software products and softwareintensive systems in. For software engineers, that means coming up with a software solution and being able to code it up properly.
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. A pen, for example, may have replaceable ink cartridges. Marketing executives believe that product lines give companies a competitive advantage. A product line is a group of related products produced by one manufacturer, for example.
This definition is consistent with the definition traditionally given for any product line. Product line definition of product line by the free dictionary. A product line is defined as a family of similar products or systems with variations in features. Application software is intended to perform certain tasks. Ple in context drew stovall biglever insight magazine junejuly 2020 issue.
Mar 31, 2020 the system software is usually written in the c programming language. Requirements engineering in feature oriented software. It is the application of engineering principles to software development. 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.
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. 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. 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. Unlike conventional software development paradigms that aim to develop single systems, sple considers the development of a family of software systems. The aim of the domain engineering process is to define and realise the commonality and the variability of the soft ware product line. Incose product line engineering international working group. Software engineers produce lengthy design documents using computeraided software engineering tools. Examples of application software include office suites, gaming applications, database systems and educational software. Engineering includes all the activities involved in planning, producing, delivering, deploying, sustaining, and even retiring products. 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. Product management organizational structure in tech.
The company manufacturing and selling the chair may have purchased fully milled legs from another company. Thinking of your product line in terms of the features offered. Clements and northrop define a software product line as follows clements 01. Product line definition and meaning collins english. Sep 06, 2016 a product can exist within another product. Software is a general term for the various kinds of program s used to operate computer s and related devices. 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.
The software product at the completion of system test product baseline the software product in its operational environment operational baseline. Software area editor david weiss discusses the benefits of using software product line engineering to produce software families. 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 challenge traditional analysis techniques, such as. Baseline configuration management software engineering. This person is in charge of determining what stays and what goes. A functional design provides a specification of the functions of a product or service on which the designers and endusers have agreed. 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. Understand the definition of a software product line spl. Product line definition of product line by the free. 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. The ibm rational solution for systems and software engineering. Product engineering is the process of innovating, designing, developing, testing and deploying a software product.
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