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The First Software
Product Line Conference

Conference Panels

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"Architecture Design Methods for Software Product Lines"

Moderator:
Robert L. Nord, Siemens Corporate Research

Panelists:
Len Bass, Software Engineering Institute
Jan Bosch, University of Karlskrona/Ronneby
Christine Hofmeister, Siemens Corporate Research
Kyo C. Kang, Pohang University of Science and Technology
Rob van Ommering, Philips Research Laboratories

A software product line is a group of software products sharing a common, managed set of features that satisfy the needs of a specific market. Business context, technology, and quality attribute requirements all exert a strong influence on the shape of the architecture for a product line. It has been postulated that what makes architectures for a product line different from those for any large system is the emphasis on the support for variation. A product line architecture must capture the description of commonalities and variabilities in the software products at a given point in time.

The issue facing this panel is how well do existing design methods support the development of architectures for product lines and what remains to be done. Panelists will discuss the difference between product line architectures and architectures for single systems and how their design method exploits the difference.

"Institutionalizing Software Product Lines"

Organizers : Jean Jourdan, Jan Bosch

Panelist:
David Weiss, Luccent Bell Labs
Ben Pronk, Philips Research Laboratories
Juha Kuusela, Nokia
Len Bass, Software Engineering Institute

Software product lines have received increasing amounts of attention especially from industry. During recent years several software development organizations have launched software product line initiatives, in order to study, adopt and assess the opportunities and benefits offered by a product line approach in their business area. The objective of this panel session is to surface and discuss the various ways followed by these organizations to institutionalize software product lines. This panel presents the opportunity to, among others, debate on:

{short description of image} How do industrial organizations adopt a product line approach ? Is it a bottom-up or a top-down initiative?

{short description of image} What organizational model is applied? Do they have launched initiatives in some business divisions.

{short description of image} What is the maturity of these initiatives, e.g. experiment, pilot product line or operational product line?

{short description of image} What kind of process has been followed to evolve product line experiments to operational product lines?

{short description of image} What migration phases are followed?

{short description of image} What decision process was used to decide on the adoption of a product line approach?

{short description of image} What is still lacking in terms of process, technology, tools, assessment model, adoption process, etc.?

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