An Architecture Maturity Model of Software Product Line

Software architecture has been a key research area in the software engineering community due to its significant role in creating high-quality software. The trend of developing product lines rather than single products has made the software product line a viable option in the industry. Software product line architecture (SPLA) is regarded as one of the crucial components in the product lines, since all of the resulting products share this common architecture. The increased popularity of software product lines demands a process maturity evaluation methodology. Consequently,this paper presents an architecture process maturity model for software product line engineering to evaluate the current maturity of the product line architecture development process in an organization. Assessment questionnaires and a rating methodology comprise the framework of this model. The objective of the questionnaires is to collect information about the SPLA development process. Thus, in general this work contributes towards the establishment of a comprehensive and unified strategy for the process maturity evaluation of software product line engineering. Furthermore, we conducted two case studies and reported the assessment results, which show the maturity of the architecture development process in two organizations

A Business Maturity Model of Software Product Line Engineering

In the recent past, software product line engineering has become one of the most promising practices in software industry with the potential to substantially increase the software development productivity. Software product line engineering approach spans the dimensions of business, architecture, software engineering process and organization. The increasing popularity of software product line engineering in the software industry necessitates a process maturity evaluation methodology. Accordingly, this paper presents a business maturity model of software product line, which is a methodology to evaluate the current maturity of the business dimension of a software product line in an organization. This model examines the coordination between product line engineering and the business aspects of software product line. It evaluates the maturity of the business dimension of software product line as a function of how a set of business practices are aligned with product line engineering in an organization. Using the model presented in this paper, we conducted two case studies and reported the assessment results. This research contributes towards establishing a comprehensive and unified strategy for a process maturity evaluation of software product lines

An Organizational Maturity Model of Software Product Line Engineering

Software product line engineering is an inter-disciplinary concept. It spans the dimensions of business, architecture, process, and the organization. Some of the potential benefits of this approach include cost reduction, improvements in product quality and a decrease in product development time. The increasing popularity of software product line engineering in the software industry necessitates a process maturity evaluation methodology. Accordingly, this paper presents an organizational maturity model of software product line engineering for evaluating the maturity of organizational dimension. The model assumes that organizational theories, behavior, and management play a critical role in the institutionalization of software product line engineering within an organization. Assessment questionnaires and a rating methodology comprise the framework of this model. The objective and design of the questionnaires are to collect information about the software product line engineering process from the dual perspectives of organizational behavior and management. Furthermore, we conducted two case studies and reported the assessment results using the organizational maturity model presented in this paper

An approach to reconcile the agile and CMMI contexts in product line development

Software product line approaches produce reusable platforms and architectures for products set developed by specific companies. These approaches are strategic in nature requiring coordination, discipline, commonality and communication. The Capability Maturity Model (CMM) contains important guidelines for process improvement, and specifies "what" we must have into account to achieve the disciplined processes (among others things). On the other hand, the agile context is playing an increasingly important role in current software engineering practices, specifying "how" the software practices must be addressed to obtain agile processes. In this paper, we carry out a preliminary analysis for reconciling agility and maturity models in software product line domain, taking advantage of both.Postprint (published version

Software Reuse in Agile Development Organizations - A Conceptual Management Tool

The reuse of knowledge is considered a major factor for increasing productivity and quality. In the software industry knowledge is embodied in software assets such as code components, functional designs and test cases. This kind of knowledge reuse is also referred to as software reuse. Although the benefits can be substantial, software reuse has never reached its full potential. Organizations are not aware of the different levels of reuse or do not know how to address reuse issues. This paper proposes a conceptual management tool for supporting software reuse. Furthermore the paper presents the findings of the application of the management tool in an agile development organization

PuLSE-I: Deriving instances from a product line infrastructure

Reusing assets during application engineering promises to improve the efficiency of systems development. However, in order to benefit from reusable assets, application engineering processes must incorporate when and how to use the reusable assets during single system development. However, when and how to use a reusable asset depends on what types of reusable assets have been created.Product line engineering approaches produce a reusable infrastructure for a set of products. In this paper, we present the application engineering process associated with the PuLSE product line software engineering method - PuLSE-I. PuLSE-I details how single systems can be built efficiently from the reusable product line infrastructure built during the other PuLSE activities