Product Line Engineering Success Stories
Are organizations really practicing PLE?
Yes. A growing number of companies across a spectrum of industry sectors – such as aerospace, defense, aviation, automotive, alternative energy, medical, computer systems, consumer electronics, e-commerce, and telecommunications – have adopted Product Line Engineering (PLE) as a way to change how they build, maintain, evolve and compete with their product lines.
PLE success stories
PLE success stories can be seen in organizations of all sizes – from small to large, globally recognized companies with some of the largest, most complex product lines in the world. Recent case studies include:
- Patterns for Success in the Adoption and Execution of Feature-based Product Line Engineering: A Report from Practitioners
- Common is Anything but Boring, How Lockheed Martin Engineers Make Breakthroughs Between Baselines
- Product Line Engineering Meets Model Based Engineering in the Defense and Automotive Industries (featuring General Motors, Raytheon and General Dynamics)
- Product Line Engineering on the Right Side of the “V” (featuring Lockheed Martin)
- The Best of Both Worlds: Agile Development Meets Product Line Engineering at Lockheed Martin
- How Automotive Engineering Is Taking Product Line Engineering to the Extreme (featuring General Motors)
- Second Generation Product Line Engineering: A Case Study at General Motors (Chapter 15: Systems and Software Variability Management)
- The More You Do, the More You Save: The Superlinear Cost Avoidance Effect of Systems Product Line Engineering (featuring Lockheed Martin)
- A Methodical Approach to Product Line Adoption (featuring General Dynamics and U.S. Army)
Websites
- BigLever Software website
- pure-systems website
- International Council on Systems Engineering
- Software Product Line Hall of Fame
Videos
- Systems and software product line engineering informational videos
- Analyst Webinar: Product Line Engineering – Increasing Competitive Advantage by Reducing Complexity Across the Lifecycle
Articles, Books, Reports, and Publications
- ISO/IEC Standard 26580
- Advanced Product Line Engineering Puts the Auto Industry in Overdrive by Paul Clements, in John Day’s Automotive Electronics, published online: August 28, 2014.
- Systems and Software Product Line Engineering by Charles W. Krueger and Paul Clements, in Encyclopedia of Software Engineering. Taylor and Francis: New York, Published online: September, 2013, pages 1-14.
- Second-Generation Paradigm by Brian E. Kemper and Dr. Jeremy T. Lanman, U.S. Army Program Executive Office Simulation, Training, and Instrumentation (PEO STRI) Army Acquisition, in Logistics & Technology (AL&T) Magazine, April 2012, pages 110-113.
- ALM and PLM: Make It Work, People by Tom Grant, in Forrester Blog, August 30, 2011.
- Product Line Engineering: Underwriting ALM and PLM Convergence by Bola Rotibi, MWD Analyst Report, August 2010.
- The Emerging Practice of Software Product Line Development by Charles W. Krueger, in Military Embedded Systems, Fall 2006, pages 39-41.
- Feature-based Systems and Software Product Line Engineering: A Primer
- Technical White Paper: Variant Management with pure::variants
- Enterprise Feature Ontology for Feature-based Product Line Engineering and Operations by Charles Krueger and Paul Clements, Proceedings of the 21st International Systems and Software Product Line Conference (SPLC 2017), Sevilla, Spain. September 2017.
- Product Line Engineering Meets Model Based Engineering in the Defense and Automotive Industries by Bobbi Young, Rick Flores, Judd Cheatwood, Todd Peterson, and Paul Clements, Proceedings of the 21st International Systems and Software Product Line Conference (SPLC 2017), Sevilla, Spain. September 2017.
- Product Line Engineering on the Right Side of the “V” by Susan P. Gregg, Denise M. Albert, and Paul Clements, Proceedings of the 21st International Systems and Software Product Line Conference (SPLC 2017), Sevilla, Spain. September 2017.
- Model Based Engineering and Product Line Engineering: Combining Two Powerful Approaches at Raytheon by Bobbi Young and Paul Clements, International Council on Systems Engineering Symposium (INCOSE IS) 2017, Adelaide, Australia. July 2017.
- An Enterprise Feature Ontology for Feature-based Product Line Engineering by Charles W. Krueger and Paul C. Clements, International Council on Systems Engineering Symposium (INCOSE IS) 2017, Adelaide, Australia. July 2017.
- The Best of Both Worlds: Agile Development Meets Product Line Engineering at Lockheed Martin by Susan P. Gregg, Rick Scharadin, and Paul C. Clements, International Council on Systems Engineering Symposium (INCOSE IS) 2016, Edinburgh, Scotland. July 2016.
- It Takes a Village: Why PLE Technology Solutions Require Ecosystems of PLE Technology Providers by William J. Bolander, Paul C. Clements, and Charles W. Krueger, International Council on Systems Engineering Symposium (INCOSE IS) 2016, Edinburgh, Scotland. July 2016.
- How Automotive Engineering Is Taking Product Line Engineering to the Extreme by Len Wozniak and Paul Clements, in Proceedings of the 19th International Software Product Line Conference (SPLC 2015), Nashville, Tennessee. July 2015.
- The More You Do, the More You Save: The Superlinear Cost Avoidance Effect of Systems Product Line Engineering by Susan P. Gregg and Paul Clements in Proceedings of the 19th International Software Product Line Conference (SPLC 2015), Nashville, Tennessee. July 2015.
- Mechanical Product Lifecycle Management meets Product Line Engineering by Charles W. Krueger in Proceedings of the 19th International Software Product Line Conference (SPLC 2015), Nashville, Tennessee. July 2015.
- Product Line Engineering Comes to the Industrial Mainstream by Paul Clements, International Council on Systems Engineering Symposium (INCOSE IS) 2015, Seattle, Washington. July 2015.
- Lessons from AEGIS: Organizational and Governance Aspects of a Major Product Line in a Multi-Program Environment by Susan P. Gregg, Rick Scharadin, Eric LeGore, and Paul Clements, in Proceedings of the 18th International Software Product Line Conference (SPLC 2014), Florence, Italy. September 2014.
- A Methodical Approach to Product Line Adoption by Michael Dillon, Jorge Rivera and Rowland Darbin, in Proceedings of the 18th International Software Product Line Conference (SPLC 2014), Florence, Italy. September 2014.
- Second Generation Product Line Engineering Takes Hold in the DoD, by Paul Clements, Susan P. Gregg, Charles Krueger, Jeremy Lanman, Jorge Rivera, Rick Scharadin, James T. Shepherd, and Andrew J. Winkler, in CrossTalk Journal of Defense Software Engineering, January/February 2014, pages 12-18.
- Multistage Configuration Trees for Managing Product Family Trees by Charles W. Krueger, in Proceedings of the 17th International Software Product Line Conference (SPLC 2013), Tokyo, Japan. August 2013.
- Second Generation Product Line Engineering – A Case Study at General Motors by Rick Flores, Charles Krueger, Paul Clements, Chapter 15: Systems and Software Variability Management, (pp. 223-253), Springer, 2013.
- The Systems and Software Product Line Engineering Lifecycle Framework, BigLever Software Technical Report #200805071r4, January 2013.
- Mega-Scale Product Line Engineering at General Motors by Rick Flores, Charles W. Krueger and Paul Clements, in Proceedings of the 16th International Software Product Line Conference (SPLC 2012), Salvador, Brazil. September 2012, pages 259-269.
- Employing the Second Generation Software Product-line for Live Training Transformation by Jeremy T. Lanman, Brian E. Kemper, Charles W. Krueger, in Proceedings of the Interservice/Industry Training, Simulation and Education Conference (I/ITSEC 2011), Orlando, Florida. November/December 2011.
- Reuse is an event, but sharing is a journey., by Charles W. Krueger, in SD Times, July 18, 2011.
- Organization works to blend application, product lifecycle management, by Katie Serignese, in SD Times, May 28, 2010.
- HomeAway’s Transition to Software Product Line Practice: Engineering and Business Results in 60 Days by Charles W. Krueger, in Proceedings of the 12th International Software Product Line Conference (SPLC 2008), Limerick, Ireland. September 2008, pages 297-306.
- A Tool-Based Approach to Managing Crosscutting Feature Implementations by Iris Groher, Charles W. Krueger, Christa Schwanninger, in Proceeding of 7th International Conference on Aspect-Oriented Software Development (AOSD ’08), Brussels, Belgium. March/April 2008.
- The Pragmatic 3-Tiered Product Line Engineering Methodology, BigLever Software Technical Report ##200709261,2020.
- Software Product Lines: Practices and Patterns by Paul Clements and Linda Northrop, Addison-Wesley, 2002.