Software Product Lines. Economics, Architectures, and Applications

Product line engineering is a concept that has emerged in the 80's in the business schools and is now among the hottest topics in software engineering. Software product lines aim at achieving scope economies through synergetic development of software products. Diverse benefits like cost reduction, decreased time-to-market, and quality improvement can be expected from reuse of domain-specific software assets. But also non-technical benefits can be expected as result of network externalities, product branding, and sharing organizational costs. This report captures the positions of researchers and practitioners in software product lines who participated in a workshop with the intent of sharing the different aspects of research and development, discussing conceptual and practical experience, and establishing key contacts.