What is Software Product Line?

What are Software Product Lines?

A software product line is simply the effort to use products related to a project more efficiently in line with a certain demand. It is an engineering effort and takes advantage of the similarities of products while also taking their differences into account. It is carried out with a broad perspective that encompasses all stages of production, design, and delivery within a good planning framework. In the ecosystem owned in this context, the management of different but similar products or demands in a way that will require less effort to increase efficiency should be systematized and managed, and in this way, the operation can achieve the desired success. It can be integrated into all tools in all operations within any software or mechanical engineering effort. In our article, we will focus on the software frame.

What Are Its Advantages? Why Do We Use Product Line?

The Product Line, namely the product line, as it is based on running different products together with similar approaches in similar time periods, reduces the complexities of different problems. So it is possible to handle operations requiring similar complexity in a single hand and keep the efficiency high. A repetitive, mature and well-known software product line brings a focal point to production and accelerates it. This speed progresses directly related to the use of certain building blocks in the same way from the focal point and a mature integration process.

How to Create a Software Product Line?

We can easily set up this process under 4 items. In the main framework, the organization is first adapted. The platform of this adapted organization is established, its scope is controlled during this installation, and action is taken accordingly. Later, the product-specific parts of the products within the product line are thought about, these are determined and the installations of these determined parts are made. Finally, we focus on similar parts and these points become the main focus of the product line. After these points are identified, the cost is reduced with repeated use. Since reused use will save from time and cost, it will increase efficiency and therefore will provide profit.

The total cost can be formulated as follows:

Initial adoption cost + Platform installation cost + Total Σ (their own parts + parts to be re-used) for all products

One of the most important points to be considered when interpreting the Software Product Line is the value of ROI which means the return on investment. In fact, this value is a very critical reason for existence related to the software product line. When usually maintaining software products in a traditional way, it usually progresses linearly based on demand, time, and different products. So as the number of products increases, the required effort/cost will increase in the same way and will progress regularly. However, in operations developed with the software product line, there will be a certain cost need at the beginning of the operation, it can be said that these are within the installation stages that we have summarized in 4 items to shape. Later, with the repeated use of similarities on common points in different products, the required cost need will remain below the cost required by the traditional way after a certain point and will provide us with an advantage. This point is called the break-even point, and after this point, our software product line operation will provide us with a measurable and considerable advantage in terms of cost/effort. It can be said that from this stage of the operation, the increase in the number of products in the software product line will provide us with more advantages.

We can easily make the mentioned interpretation over this graph.

As a result of traditional software development, our cost for all products is equal to the learning index on similar products for the product. The index of learning is a term added to the equation representing the development in the work with the experience gained by the working team, the organization while doing similar jobs.

However, in operations where we proceed by considering the similarities of products with the Software Product Line, there will be a benefit in the repeating usage rate in the traditional formula. This means significant benefits in advanced operation ecosystems. Detailed ROI document for software product development can be reached via IEEE.

Let's dwell on how we comment on practices/products over similarities and differences.

Approaches to Similarities and Differences

We can consider the products we want to work on as a product set. In this set, the similar points of the products should be worked on in detail first, and then the unique features of the product should be worked on. Diversity management is the fundamental point of this operation and it should be decided well and take the related action and in this way, the scopes,p software product architecture, components of the application and necessary tests should be agreed upon. As diversity increases in the software product line, the number of systems increases and thus the potential to adapt to change increases. Diversity can be called susceptibility to change. For example, a software application can have different supports on different languages. To interpret this diversity, we need to ask how, which product, why, and when.

Diversity is essential to understand the interpretation of similarities and differences. Changing user needs, product change, and technical needs can only be met in this way. In diversity management, similarities, differences and diversifiable points are determined. Not only specific products, specific bands, but all products, all beings can be classified with certain features to determine their scopes. Those are different points from one, the rest are all features common with others.

To relate diversity management to a system, we can look at the mandatory and optional points. For example, all existing computers have a processor and provide a user interface to their users. However, every computer doesn't have to have a DVD reader 📀, or it may not have flash storage and can be configured with them. These examples can be easily multiplied. Similarly, there will be components to be created or removed in the software.

The Future of the Product Line

The product line is undoubtedly at an important point in the software world and its popularity is increasing day by day. It is obvious that it brings us a managerial discipline in large-scale projects or operations where certain products are managed. As it is in a very intense development based on standardization and a new generation of interpretation, the most logical predictions about the future are that the development of the product line in the software world will continue to increase steadily and organizations will dwell more on this approach.

What is Refactoring?

In the management of the software product line, we had to mention Refactoring over editing the necessary code parts, making it more efficient and commenting based on the purpose. First, let's search for the answer to the question, what is Refactoring? In short, it can be said that it is changing for a certain purpose while remaining loyal to the identity of the existing code in order to make it more useful. Hence it includes small changes, new errors arising from different purpose integrations and changes are made to speed it up. In product line management, there can be new tests demanded/demanded in accordance with new requests apart from the specific tests of the software, changes may be needed on these and a need may have arisen to make it more efficient, all of these are its intended purposes. If we dwell on its benefits, continuity and flexibility can be said. The elimination of errors and deficiencies on it can facilitate reading of the code or eliminate its functional deficiencies, and thus it will benefit us in terms of continuity. Also, refactoring our application, for example, to integrate it with certain software design patterns, will make our presence more adequate and more efficient, and this new adequacy level will make our project more flexible.