A Software Product Line Vision for Defense Acquisition

Experience in industry and government over the last 10 years has shown that a software product line approach can significantly improve productivity and product quality, facilitate change, and reduce life-cycle costs. Defense acquisition policy calls for such improvements related to software but makes no explicit mention of a product line approach as an option. Although policy gives program managers sufficient flexibility to adopt a product line approach, there is little awareness of this possibility and considerable uncertainty concerning when and how to do it. This note presents a vision for software product lines as an acquisition focus and suggests extensions to current Department of Defense policy and practices to increase the awareness of and receptivity to product line acquisition as a viable alternative.