Product Line Engineering is a common approach to address a business with a family of related software products. Instead of having seperated development projects for each product in the family, all products are built using a shared set of core assets, such as a reference architecture and common infrastructure and domain-specific components. Key drivers for PLE are the potential cost savings due to the shared development and use of core assets, as well as an extended business case for the products in the family, for instance, by supporting their tight integration and interworking.

Successful PLE depends on many challenging factors. For instance, what are the products that are part of the product-line? What assests are considered common across all products and what assests are product-specific? Is a revolotuinary apprach better than an evolutionary approach? How can the variabilities amongst the products can be managed effectively? What processes, methods, and technologies support PLE and what properties are required for the architecture and components that form the foundation of the product-line? And what are the traps and pitfalls that can let a PLE approach fail?

In this tutorial we outline the experience made with PLE in several-real world projects, ranging from the mediacl to the industry domain. Goal is to provide practical guidance for project managers and architects facing the "PLE challenge" to help making their PLE activities an economical and technical success.

Level: intermediate

Target audience: project managers, software architects