An assessment approach to analyzing benefits and risks of product lines

Software Product Lines is still a new field within software reuse that aims at large-scale, systematic reuse. Hugh benefits regarding the reduction of time-to-markets, reduction of effort, and quality improvement have been reported as a result of adopting a product line approach. Since a product line program involves major investments, considerable risks are associated with it. Thus, it is important to evaluate at the start of a product line project, i.e., before the major investments are performed, its potential benefits and risks. In this paper we describe an approach that allows to identify the benefits and risks in a systematic manner, thus enabling the early development of risk-avoiding measures. As opposed to other techniques our approach supports the identification of subdomains that are particular appropriate for systematic reuse and by means of the detailed evaluation enables trade-off decisions on where to invest for reuse.