Managing large scale reuse across multiple software product lines

Abstract

For large scale applications in today's competitive business environment, partial reuse at class, library, component or module level is still inadequate. Software product lines provide systematic reuse only within a product family. Better gains in productivity and high confidentiality can be achieved by large scale reuse across multiple product lines. This paper puts a methodical way, articulated as "Software Factory Automation", which can manage reusable assets across distinct software product lines based on "domain specific kits" and "software asset meta model". The approach is validated by analyzing the software asset reuse in two different product lines implemented in banking domain and practically used in real life. The results show that high level of reuse within and across multiple product lines can be achieved with the charted roadmap. © 2008 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.