Software Product Line Engineering Basics - Model-Driven and Software Product Line Engineering - page 48

of requirements. There are other benefits for the company that
adopts the product line approach. It increases the company's
domain knowledge and its expertise about the product that
it is developing and selling. This also has important business
benefits in terms of product costs, time-to-market, and process
efficiency. The company can expect some strong feedback on
its organization and its relationships with customers becomes
more reliable.
Nonetheless, there are also some drawbacks. One of the
main drawbacks is that product line engineering needs
expertise and an initial investment. It is not realistic to
expect a quick return on investment; visible benefits are not
immediate since we first have to play domain engineering. It
is well known that a sufficient number of products must be
developed before the product line takes advantage over a more
classic software engineering approach. Due to the efforts to
launch SPLE, this is mainly adopted by big companies and
is difficult for smaller companies. To manage a product line
requires connecting and using various tools and formalisms.
It is difficult to make various software systems interoperable.
ThisisapointwhereMDEisstillapromisingtechnology.There
are also social resistances,for instance,to change the practices
of engineers and developers. Thus, a domain expert is required
to correctly manage a product line project but participants
should also get a global view of the entire product line. This
needs an initial investment for teaching SPLE in the company.
Communication and documentation about the product line are
importantaspectstoensuretheglobalconsistencybetweenthe
various activities and stakeholders.
2.9. Issues in product line
Severalissuesexistintheadoptionofsoftwareproductlines.
Here, we focus on some of them: the use of MDE to automate
and represent variability, testing, the need for traceability,
software evolution, and tool support.