1. Software Architecture in Practice
RiSE’s Seminars
Bass’s book :: Chapter 14
Ana Paula Cavalcanti
December 7, 2018

2. Summary Software Product Lines (Chapter 14) Overview
What Makes Software Product Lines Work?
Scoping
Architectures for Product Lines
What Makes Software Product Lines Difficult
December 7, 2018

3. Overview Software Product Lines :: Chapter 14
“Architecturally mature organization tend to treat their architectures as valuable intellectual property and look for ways in which that property can be leveraged to produce additional revenue and reduce costs.”
Explicit and planned re-use of a software architecture across a family of related systems
Base architecture  common and tailorable elements that populate
CORE ASSET
BASE
Applied to more than one system
Reuse is cheaper than reinvent
December 7, 2018

4. Overview Software Product Lines :: Chapter 14
Software Product Lines: “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.”
Simplify the creation of systems
Improvements in costs
Depends on coordinated strategy involving software engineering, technical and organizational management
December 7, 2018

5. What Makes Software Product Lines Work?
Software Product Lines :: Chapter 14
What Makes Software Product Lines Work?
“The essence of a software product line is the disciplined, strategic re-use of assets in producing a family of products.”
Focus on commonalities shared by the products
Requirements
Architectural design
Elements
Modeling and analysis
Testing
Project Planning
Process, methods and tools
People
Exemplar systems
Defect elimination
December 7, 2018

6. What Makes Software Product Lines Work?
Software Product Lines :: Chapter 14
What Makes Software Product Lines Work?
Rely on Reuse
Promise almost always exceeding the pay off
Rich Libraries
Small Libraries
“Software product lines make re-use work by establishing a very strict context for it. Nothing is placed in the re-use library that was not built to be re-use in that product line. Product lines work by relying on strategic or planned, not opportunistic, re-use”
December 7, 2018

7. Software Product Lines :: Chapter 14
Scoping
Define the product line scope
Organization’s best prediction about what products it will be asked to build in the foreseeable future.
Narrow scope (Products vary in a small number of features)
Broad scope (Products vary in any kind as well as in features)
Find commonality that can be exploited to substantially reduce the cost of constructing the systems that an organization intends to build.
December 7, 2018

8. Architectures for Product Lines
Software Product Lines :: Chapter 14
Architectures for Product Lines
“The essence of building a successful software product line is discriminating between what is expected to remain constant across all family members and what is expected to vary.”
Identifying Variation Points
Requirements Elicitation
Architecture Design
Implementation
December 7, 2018

9. Architectures for Product Lines
Software Product Lines :: Chapter 14
Architectures for Product Lines
Supporting Variation Points
Inclusion or omission of elements
Inclusion of a different number of replicated elements
Selection of versions of elements that have the same interface but different behavioral or quality attribute characteristics
Evaluating a Product Line Architecture
What, how and when to evaluate?
Focus on the variation points to make sure they are appropriate
Sufficient flexibility to cover the intended scope
December 7, 2018

10. What Makes Software Product Lines Difficult
Software Product Lines :: Chapter 14
What Makes Software Product Lines Difficult
It takes a certain maturity…
Technology is not the only barrier
Organization, process and business issues
Adoption Strategies
“Getting an organization to adopt the product line approach is in many regards like any other technology insertion problem. How to solve it depends on the organization’s culture and context.”
“Knowing the various adoption models can help an organization chose the one that is right for it.”
December 7, 2018

11. What Makes Software Product Lines Difficult
Software Product Lines :: Chapter 14
What Makes Software Product Lines Difficult
Creating Products and Evolving a Product Line
Manage its evolution…
External sources
Internal sources
Organizational Strategies
Development department
Business units
Domain Engineering unit
Hierarchical domain engineering unit
December 7, 2018

12. References
BASS, L.; CLEMENTS, P.; KAZMAN, R. Software Architecture in Practice. Addison-Wesley, 2003.
CLEMENTS, P.; NOTHROP, L. Software Product Lines – Practice and Patterns. Addison-Wesley, 2002.
December 7, 2018