Clearing the Way for Software Product Line Success

Many organizations are attracted to the well-documented benefits of a software product line approach. However, many would-be adoptors encounter difficulty in implementation. We share insights based on 15 years of experience collaborating with a large number of organizations and using our diagnostic, the Software Engineering Institute's Product Line Technical Probe. We've examined a variety of government and commercial organizations, ranging in size from less than 50 people to global corporations. Based on these results, we characterize two strategic pitfalls that repeatedly occur: failure to recognize that a software product line approach is a business and technical strategy, and failure to manage the unique aspects of governance for a product line and roll it out appropriately. We provide a set of diagnostic questions and remedies for problems related to these failures. We also provide additional downfalls that tend to occur in either engineering-based or developer-focused organizations. © 2010 IEEE.