Software Product Lines

Abstract

Software product lines aim at empowering software vendors to tailor software products to the requirements of individual customers. In this sense, software product lines follow a development that emerged in industrial manufacturing over the last 200 years. Starting with handcrafting of individual goods, the advent of mass production scaled the production process to large quantities, but neglected individualism, as all products were the same. With mass customization, individualism got back into the focus of attention. Manufacturers systematically planned and designed product lines to cover a whole spectrum of possible products and variations thereof, serving the individual needs and wishes of many customers. Software product lines take the same line and reconcile mass production and mass customization in software engineering.