Software Product Line Engineering Basics - Model-Driven and Software Product Line Engineering - page 33

of any reactive product line engineering. That is, once the
solution-oriented approach has been completed, the reactive
team could lift up specific product analysis/design/coding done
in application engineering and improve domain engineering
to evolve the product line.
The organization of the re-use is an important factor for
the benefits of a product line. However, it requires an initial
investment and it pays off only after the assets are re-
used in several products. It seems that in any case, a good
management of the re-use needs centralization. A completely
distributed management of the core assets is risky; the
focus of the product line may diverge. The critical technical
aspects are numerous and many different points have to
be considered for the success of an SPLE process. Some of
these are discussed in this topic and in further detail in this
section. An important one is variability management, but also
the building of the architecture reference, and the chain for
product derivation. Testing, evolution, traceability, and quality
management are of great importance; they are usual in the
traditional software development process but in SPLE they
have new characteristics and they are more complex. Some of
these issues are briefly discussed in section 2.9.
2.5. Domain engineering
Domain engineering is the process of SPL engineering in
which the commonality and the variability of the product line
are defined [POH 05b]. The development of an SPL starts with
the analysis and modeling of common and variable features of
the product line. A domain analysis, which limits the product
line scope, is performed. In a second step, commonality and
variability are identified, classified, and documented. During
this engineering, re-usable core assets are built to fulfill the
identified and classified variations. Finally, a production plan
is defined, which is the set of rules to build the products of the
domain.