An Incremental Transition Strategy is Key to a Successful Introduction of Product Line Engineering

The motivation for almost every technology transfer project is an organization's problem or goal. Software reuse is a discipline that is a promising candidate for improvement activities in case of many problems software organizations typically have. Nevertheless software reuse - and also product line engineering as one orientation towards reuse - is only one of many fields in which an organization can improve. Consequently, product line engineering must compete before any transfer project with alternative approaches. Unfortunately, most of the existing product line engineering methods ignore this competition so that data is missing that helps arguing for product line engineering in this competition. In this paper we describe how strategies for transitioning towards product line engineering can be defined. We think that their clear definitions in conjunction with accompanying measurement programs are the basis for monitoring the transfer projects themselves, as well as sharing comparable data on product line transfer in the research community.