Software Product Line in Small and Medium Sized Company

Software development costs and time to deploy a software-intensive system significantly decrease when Software Product Line (SPL) approach is applied [3]. However software product line engineering requires long-term planning, the companies that have used it successfully are large ones that can afford to take the long view [1].

But smaller enterprises must be flexible and fast in reacting to customer requests. Moreover most publicized software product lines come with pedigrees written in large script: Nokia, Motorola, Hewlett Packard, CelsiusTech, Philips, and others. These organizations boast hundreds of developers, with budgets more than ample enough to cover an experiment or two with a new and untried paradigm. And if it fails – well, there’s always a bit of a risk with an R&D project, isn’t there? It’s not as though the company will be in peril [1].

For small companies, R&D is an unaffordable luxury. And experiments are for laboratories, not lean need-it-now production shops where every product has to strike market gold for the company to survive [3]. No wonder the conventional wisdom views software product lines as a game only for the heavyweights. For the record, the conventional wisdom is utterly wrong. In fact, software product lines offer many small companies their last best hope for success.

Today, we have significant examples of application of SPL in SMEs. In most cases SMEs use research groups as Reuse Software Engineering (RiSE) kind of an external research department.

Advantages of a small company over a large one include the following [2]:

· It is much more easy to articulate a vision in a small organization and make it stick. This is true of any vision, but especially true of a product line vision. Product lines are typically sold to management because they hold the promise of lower cost and quicker turnaround. In a large organization, those goals are fairly abstract to the troops grinding out code. But in a small company, the developers are much more tuned in to the company’s economic picture; there is a short distance from economics to developers.

· A corollary to the previous point is that it is much easier to find places where the vision needs reinforcing.

· A small organization can get by with lightweight product line processes, for they are used to lightweight processes anyway.

· A small organization’s developers can more easily acquire useful domain knowledge.

· Managers in a small organization typically apply their hand at many tasks, including development, so they know firsthand where the approach is falling short.

[1] Peter Knauber, Dirk Muthig, Klaus Schmid, Tanya Widen: : “Applying Product Line Concepts in Small and Medium-Sized Companies. ”;

[2] Martin Verlage, Thomas Kiesgen: “Five years of product line engineering in a small company.”

[3] José L. Barros, José M. Marqués: Support to Development-with-Reuse in Very Small Software Developing Companies.”;

[4] David Sellier, Gorka Benguria Elguezabal, Gorka Urchegui: “Introducing Software Product Line Engineering for Metal Processing Lines in a Small to Medium Enterprise.”;