A Systematic Approach to Derive the Scope of Software Product Lines

Product line scoping is a critical activity because it elicits the common realms upon which the different products of a product line can be optimally engineered with respect to economies of scope. This, in turn, upper bounds the overall economic benefits that can be accrued from product line based development. Inherently, product line scoping is difficult because of the complexity of the factors that must be taken into account. Many are not known a priori. Traditional scoping approaches (from domain engineering) have focused on the notion of application domains. However, domains proved difficult to optimally scope and engineer from an enterprise standpoint because a domain captures extraneous elements that are of no interest to an enterprise which focuses on particular products, whether existing, under development, or anticipated. Hence, the domain view provides a flawed economic basis for making a scoping decision. We introduce in this paper PuLSE-Eco, a technique especially developed to address the aforementioned issues. Its main characteristics are: a complete product-centric orientation done via product maps, the separation of concerns achieved through the definition and operationalization of strategical business objectives, and last, diverse types of analyses performed upon product maps allowing scoping decisions based on these objectives. We illustrate the technique with a running example.