Experiences with product line development of embedded systems at testo AG

Product line practices are increasingly becoming popular in the domain of embedded software systems. This paper presents results of assessing success, consistency, and quality of Testo's product line of climate and flue gas measurement devices after its construction and the delivery of three commercial products. The results of the assessment showed that the incremental introduction of architecture-centric product line development can be considered successful even though there is no quantifiable reduction of time-to-market as well as development and maintenance costs so far. The success is mainly shown by the ability of Testo to develop more complex products and the satisfaction of the involved developers. A major issue encountered is ensuring the quality of reusable components and the conformance of the products to the architecture during development and maintenance.