Product Line State of the Practice Report

Software product lines represent a new and promising approach for fielding software systems. Companies that have launched software product line efforts report significant improvements in cost savings, quality, productivity, and time to market. Technically, they report a high degree of success in developing approaches that address the software engineering and technical management of their product lines. Organizationally, these companies report success as well as challenges that they must still overcome. This technical note reports on the state of software product line practice in industry. The report uses a narrative approach, based on a composite of individual companies' experiences in implementing software product lines. The report blends a case study with the results of a product line questionnaire that was sent to organizations with meaningful product line experiences and with the results of a product line workshop held during the recent International Conference on Software Reuse.