Next Generation Software Product Line Engineering

Abstract

Software product line engineering has advanced to the point where we know how to create software product lines on small to medium scales, and some organizations are having success on a larger scale. Success has come rather slowly, however, if one considers that many of the key ideas are 25-35 years old. For example, Dijkstra discussed the idea of program families in the late 1960s, David Parnas and others clarified the idea and showed how to apply it in real-time systems in the mid 1970s, and Jim Neighbors invented domain analysis in the early 1980s. Through the 1980s and 1990s we saw the systematization of product line engineering processes and their first applications. The first Software Product Lines Conference was held in 2000. Much of the development of the field has focused on technical aspects of creating product lines and producing applications. Indeed, most of the technical problems in creating product lines now seem solvable for many product lines. The Software Product Line Hall of Fame gives us examples of successful large scale product lines.