Software Engineering Institute Carnegie Mellon

About the logo

General Contact Information

Customer Relations
customer-relations@sei.cmu.edu
Tel.: +1 412-268-5800

Government Customer Representative

Terry Dailey
etd@sei.cmu.edu
Tel: 703-908-8213

Industry Customer Representative

Jay Douglass
jcd@sei.cmu.edu
Tel: 412-268-6834

SEI Europe Representative

sei-europe@sei.cmu.edu
Tel: +49 (0) 69 7593 8176

Customer Engagements

SEI Product Line Practice (PLP) customer engagements are funded services to help organizations apply best practices. Specific product line practice (PLP) services are

Additional products and services are available at Product Lines Practice: Products and Services.

Product Line Executive Session
During the half-day Product Line Executive Session, a product line expert from the SEI provides an overview of software product lines to a designated group of managers from the organization. The SEI expert facilitates a discussion about software product lines and the potential for the organization’s adoption of the approach.

Customized Product Line Solution
The SEI collaborates with organizations to develop a customized product line solution, tailoring existing methods and approaches as necessary to fit specific product or organizational needs.

Product Line Diagnosis Using the PLQL or the PLTP
The SEI performs product line diagnostics using either the Product Line Quick Look (PLQL), which is a one-day high-level examination, or the more extensive Product Line Technical Probe (PLTP), which takes a week. The SEI team documents the results of the diagnostics in a report provided to the customer organization. Read More ...

Product Line Adoption/Action Planning Workshop
The Product Line Adoption/Action Planning Workshop is a natural follow-up to the Product Line Technical Probe (PLTP). The PLTP produces a portrayal of the state of an organization’s product line practices. The planning workshop helps translate that portrayal into a plan of action. The workshop is a tailored, facilitated work session in which an SEI team works with a customer team, typically over two days, to produce a product line adoption plan or an action plan. Read More ...

Tailored Management Assistance on Product Line Efforts
The SEI provides tailored management assistance to support developing a product line adoption plan, business case, operating concept, acquisition strategy, training plans, and appropriate data collection, metrics, and tracking mechanisms. The following services are among those offered:

  • Product Line Concept of Operations Workshop: During this two-day working session, SEI product line experts work with product line managers to develop a product line concept of operations (CONOPS).
  • Product Line Business Case Workshop: During this two-day working session, SEI product line experts use the Structured Intuitive Model for Product Line Economics (SIMPLE) to help product line managers develop a product line business case.
  • Product Line Acquisition Support: SEI experts work with an acquisition organization to develop requests for proposals; an acquisition strategy; statements of work; and contractor planning, tracking, and monitoring that are specific to a product line effort.
  • Product Line Measurement Workshop: This three-day working session guides participants in defining meaningful measures aligned with their software product line goals and developing an action plan for obtaining these goals within the context of the processes in their product line efforts.

Tailored Technical Support on Product Line Efforts
The SEI provides tailored technical assistance to support scoping and product line analysis, architecture definition, architecture evaluation, mining assets, migration planning, component development, and testing.

  • Product Line Analysis and Scoping Workshop: During this one-week working session, SEI experts guide an organization through a product line analysis that results in a preliminary set of product line artifacts that include a use case model, a feature model, an object model, a domain- and organization-specific dictionary, and a preliminary scoping document.
  • Product Line Architecture Support: SEI product line experts help an organization to define a product line architecture with appropriate variation mechanisms as well as to document and evaluate the architecture.
  • Product Line Variability Management Workshop: During this two- to three-day session, SEI product line experts guide an organization in understanding the goal of variability in a product line approach and help the organization determine appropriate variation points, variation mechanisms, and variability-management strategies and tool support.
  • Product Line Production Planning Workshop: During this two-day session, SEI product line experts guide an organization through the initial development of a product-production strategy and provide tools and directions for applying that strategy to the creation of a production method and a production plan.
  • Configuration Management Practice Workshop: During this two-day session, SEI product line experts lead a product line organization through the initial steps in developing or refining its configuration management practices for its software product line effort.