14th Asia-Pacific Software Engineering Conference
The First International Workshop on Management and Economics of Software Product Lines (MESPUL07) Muhammad Ali Babar Lero, University of Limerick, Ireland
[email protected]
Makoto Nonaka Toyo University, Japan
[email protected]
The first international workshop on management and economics of software product lines will bring together researchers and practitioners from academia, industry and governments to report and discuss the challenges and opportunities of adopting and managing software product lines from managerial, organizational, and economics point of view.
and products, multiple deadlines for delivering core assets as well as individual projects, and resource allocation decisions. Software product line practitioners need new approaches, models, and tools for addressing various challenges related to the management and economics of software product lines to be able to maximize the business value of adopting product line approach. Moreover, there is need for gathering and using empirical evidence to support different approaches of software product lines.
1. Introduction
2. Objectives
Software Product Line (SPL) has recently emerged as a viable and important software development paradigm [1, 3]. The SPL approach promises to help organizations maximize the intra-organizational reuse of software artefacts in order to reduce cost, improve time-to-market, and achieve better quality [3]. To realise the objective of large-scale reuse of artefacts, the SPL approach focuses on disciplined processes, heavy documentation, and rigorous design and assessment of software architectures [1]. Many companies have been adopting product line approach in order to improve the efficiency of their development processes, to increase the quality of end product, and reduce time-to-market and cost [2, 6]. Researchers and practitioners have proposed several methods, techniques, and tools to support the technical aspects of software product line engineering. Researchers have also proposed different mechanics of calculating ROI, understanding Cost-Benefits, and critical factors in adopting software product lines [4, 5, 7]. However, the body of knowledge on the management and economics aspects of software product lines is very thin. Adoptions and management of software product lines require significant initial investment that is expected to maximize the business value [8]. In addition, managing a product line project is far complex and difficult because of several reasons such as the inter-related structure between core assets
In this workshop we aim at bringing together both researchers and practitioners to discuss the challenges and opportunities of adopting and managing software product lines from managerial, organizational, and economics point of view. The workshop will provide a forum to present ideas about using existing management and organizational strategies and economic models to support software product lines and/or propose new approaches, techniques, and tools for business and technical manager to maximize the business value of software product line engineering. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to: • Models for cost-benefit analysis • Economic models applicable to software product line engineering • Managerial strategies for successful software product line engineering • Management, organizational, and business strategies for adopting software product lines • Mechanics of calculating ROI for software product line engineering • Risks and economic benefits of using OSS in SPLs • Applications of value-based approaches in SPLs • Application of value-based approaches to software product line engineering.
Abstract
1530-1362/07 $25.00 © 2007 IEEE DOI 10.1109/ASPEC.2007.86
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Economics (SIMPLE), Software Engineering Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, USA., 2005. [5] Cohen, S. Predicting When Product Line Investment Pays, Software Engineering Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, USA., 2003. [6] Linden, F.v.d. Software Product Families in Europe: The Esaps & Cafe Projects. IEEE software, 19 (4). 41-49. [7] Matsumoto, Y. A Guide for Management and Financial Controls of Product Lines The 11th International software product line conference, Kyoto, Japan, 2007. [8] Northrop, L.M. SEI's Software Product Line Tenets. IEEE software, 19 (4). 32-40.
3. Organization Workshop co-organizers and program co-chairs: • •
Muhammad Ali Babar (Lero, Ireland) Makoto Nonaka (Toyo University, Japan)
The workshop organizers would like to thank the following members of the Program Committee for their willingness to help us to evaluate and select relevant and quality work for this workshop. • • • • • • • • •
Rami Bashoon - Aston University, UK Stefan Biffl - TU Wien, Austria Paul Clements – Software Engineering Institute, USA Paul Gruenbacher - University of Linz, Austria Martin Jankela, DECOMSYS, Japan Rick Kazman – Software Engineering Institute, USA Kyo Kong - POSTECH, South Korea Klaus Schmid - University of Hildesheim, Germany Steffen Thiel, Lero, University of Limerick, Ireland
4. Acknowledgement This workshop is partly sponsored by the Top SE project, a 5-year project for human resources development program for the creation of fundamental software, funded by FY 2004 Special Coordination Funds for Promoting Science and Technology from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT), at National Institute of Informatics, Japan.
5. References [1] Bosch, J. Design & Use of Software Architectures: Adopting and evolving a product-line approach. Addison-Wesley, 2000. [2] Bosch, J. Product-Line Architectures in Industry: A Case Study The 20th International Conference on Software Engineering, 1999. [3] Clements, P. and Northrop, L. Software Product Lines: Practices and Patterns. Addison-Wesley, 2001. [4] Clements, P.C., McGregor, J.D. and Cohen, S.G. The Structured Intuitive Model for Product Line
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