People management in institutionalizing product lines

Currently, the key approach to large-scale software reuse is product line development, an approach built upon the systematic development of building blocks for reuse. While most work on product lines focusses on technical issues, in the end they are built by by people. Winning them for product line development is a key issue in successfully introducing and institutionalizing product line development in an organization. This makes people issues a key concern in technology transfer. Based on our experience in technical transfer in the product line area we developed some hypotheses on how these people issues can be formed in a way favorable to product line development. In particular, we focus on the relation between the mind set of people, communication patterns, and the organizational structure. We then give concrete rules based on our own industrial experience as well as industry reports that support instutionalizing product line development.