Product Lines - Myths wanted
We're running a panel entitled Product Lines - Exploding the myths at PPL2009 in October.
Here's the synopsis:
Throughout the the conference, we find many examples of organisation that have successfully applied Product Lines and are still applying them to their benefit. At the same time, we are also aware of companies that have a candidate product line, but have not yet adopted a Product Lines approach.
Common excuses put forward by these companies are that “the initial investment is too big”, “Product Lines are an academic thing”, "Product Lines are only for the embedded world" or “we don’t need a Product Line, because we can configure everything through if-defs". Companies can have valid arguments for not adopting Product Lines, but we believe that in many cases their 'reasons' can be qualified as ‘myths’.
In this session, an invited panel of expert Product Line practitioners separates fact from fiction in the world of Product Lines. Come along to see them shine a light on some of these myths and 'myths' put forward by other audience members.
We're interested in collecting common 'myths' around Product Lines ahead of the panel. Please share them here.
Here's the synopsis:
Throughout the the conference, we find many examples of organisation that have successfully applied Product Lines and are still applying them to their benefit. At the same time, we are also aware of companies that have a candidate product line, but have not yet adopted a Product Lines approach.
Common excuses put forward by these companies are that “the initial investment is too big”, “Product Lines are an academic thing”, "Product Lines are only for the embedded world" or “we don’t need a Product Line, because we can configure everything through if-defs". Companies can have valid arguments for not adopting Product Lines, but we believe that in many cases their 'reasons' can be qualified as ‘myths’.
In this session, an invited panel of expert Product Line practitioners separates fact from fiction in the world of Product Lines. Come along to see them shine a light on some of these myths and 'myths' put forward by other audience members.
We're interested in collecting common 'myths' around Product Lines ahead of the panel. Please share them here.
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Angelo Hulshout on
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Let me revive this discussion, with only 4 weeks to go until the conference is there. Of course we have the three myths that mark mentions as one liners.
First of all - let me elaborate a bit on those mentioned by Mark, afterwards, I'd be happy to hear from you all which myths you have encountered. Or, if you disagree, can you help us identify when these myths are indeed myths, and when they are true reasons not to adopt a product line approach?
"The initial investment is too big" - this one I've heard a couple of times, and seems to be the key argument for introduction of any new methodology or tool set. Focus seems to be most often on short term investments, rather than mid- to longterm benefits.
"Product lines are an academic thing" - the people I encountered in R&D for the hightech industry over the past 10 years are very pragmatic and focused on their own approach and products. If they need to build two similar products, they do it. When discussing the opportunities of SPL, the response in many cases is "our software is different from what researchers think, and from everybody else's as well", or "yeah, researchers and book authors provide us with a nice dream, but our software is so involved with the hardware that we can never do this". I'm not sure if similar arguments are used in other industries, but it is very hard to get past people that take this angle.
"Product lines are for the embedded world only" - this one is, again, related to hightech industry. Despite reluctance of R&D departments, organisations like Philips Research have spent quite some time and budget on product line research. When bringing up the issue with people working in office automation or what is now called 'IT', this argument often brought up around here. Sometimes rephrased as "we don't do products, we do infrastructure and process support, SPL is something for product development"
"we don't need a product line, we can configure everything through if-defs" - this last one I heard quite a few times already. The sad thing is that at least one party taking this approach has ended up with so many, slightly different, versions of much of their software that they require 3 times as many software engineers to maintain it as were originally involved in the development.
The panel will focus on issues like this, trying to find out what is real, and under which conditions, and what are clearly myths. We don't intend to enforce product lines on everyone, but we do want to (re-)clarify that Software Product Lines are a useful approach when applied in the right way to the right problem.
So - who is willing to share their myths, or those they encountered with us?
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