This website provides an overview and a collection of informational resources regarding the increasingly important field of Systems and Software Product Line Engineering (PLE):
The Long March to PLE: From the Terracotta Army to Mass Customization
From the Chinese emperor who had an army of 8,000 personalized clay soldiers built to adorn his mausoleum, to the consumer who receives personalized recommendations from Amazon and Netflix today, people have always gotten a psychological reward from having things made “just for them.” What are ways that businesses can deliver this level of customized […]
PLE’s Time Is Coming; Here’s Why
Ask Google what PLE stands for, and the first answers that appear are “personal learning environment,” “protein-losing enteropathy,” and “pleural effusion.” Then comes the topic of this website: product-line engineering. But don’t let the lack of widespread notoriety fool you. This PLE is in the process of upending traditional assumptions of engineering—and transforming how some […]
Adopting PLE
A prerequisite for successful adoption is clear motivation. Many organizations adopt Product Line Engineering (PLE) because they have encountered the “wall” where their engineering capability is swamped by the engineering complexity of their portfolio.
Benefits
PLE is important because organizations that practice it are experiencing remarkable strategic business and technical benefits. Examples of benefits include faster time to market (up to 10x), reduced cost for building and delivering a product (up to 10x), increased product line scalability (up to 5x), and increased product quality (up to 10x).
Concepts
Evolving from its early first generation roots, Second Generation PLE (2GPLE) is a first-class engineering practice centered on the creation of a PLE factory. This innovative, yet pragmatic, approach is experiencing mainstream adoption across industry sectors, in organizations from small to some of the largest in the world.