A Business Maturity Model of Software Product Line Engineering

TL;DR

This paper introduces a business maturity model for software product line engineering to evaluate how well business practices align with engineering processes, supported by case studies demonstrating its application.

Contribution

It presents a novel methodology for assessing the maturity of the business aspect in software product line engineering, integrating business practices with engineering processes.

Findings

Case studies show effective assessment of business maturity

Model helps identify gaps between business practices and engineering

Supports strategic planning for software product line maturity

Abstract

In the recent past, software product line engineering has become one of the most promising practices in software industry with the potential to substantially increase the software development productivity. Software product line engineering approach spans the dimensions of business, architecture, software engineering process and organization. The increasing popularity of software product line engineering in the software industry necessitates a process maturity evaluation methodology. Accordingly, this paper presents a business maturity model of software product line, which is a methodology to evaluate the current maturity of the business dimension of a software product line in an organization. This model examines the coordination between product line engineering and the business aspects of software product line. It evaluates the maturity of the business dimension of software product line as a function of how a set of business practices are aligned with product line engineering in an organization. Using the model presented in this paper, we conducted two case studies and reported the assessment results. This research contributes towards establishing a comprehensive and unified strategy for a process maturity evaluation of software product lines.