Understanding the software product line derivation process: an industrial example

Software Product Line Engineering has emerged as a software engineering strategy aimed at helping industry achieve business goals. Nevertheless, in order to ensure the return of invest-ment with the Software Product Line (SPL) approach, a well-defined Product Derivation (PD) process is important. Without this process, the products are instantiated in an ad-hoc manner with success relying on the effort of a few individual members. This may increase the produc-tion costs and time-to-market. Despite its importance, when compared to the vast amount of research on developing product lines, relatively little work has been dedicated to the process of product derivation. Additional-ly, there are few available reports about how software development organizations derive their products from a product line. Thus, this study presents the findings gathered through to the case study methodology in or-der to enhance understanding of how product derivation is performed in industrial settings, in-cluding its key phases and activities in the product derivation process