Expanding the Scope of Software Product Families: Problems and Alternative Approaches

Abstract

Software product families have found broad adoption in the embedded systems industry. Product family thinking has been prevalent in this context for mechanics and hardware and adopting the same for software has been viewed as a logical approach. During recent years, however, the trends of convergence, end-to-end solutions, shortened innovation and R&D cycles and differentiaton through software engineering capabilities have lead to a development where organizations are stretching the scope of their product families far beyond the initial design. Failing to adjust the product family approach, including the architectural and process dimensions when the business strategy is changing is leading to several challenging problems that can be viewed as symptons of this approach. The keynote discusses the key symptoms, the underlying causes for these symptons as well as solutions for realigning the product family approach with the business strategy.