Organisational strategies for the derivation of products from a software product line

Increasingly organisations adopt software product lines to enable extensive reuse and deliver a multitude of benefits. Compared to the vast amounts of research on developing product lines and approaches to deriving products from a product line, relatively little work has been dedicated to the organisational aspects of deriving products. Much of the current research focuses on the technical aspects of product derivation. Through our collaborations with several industry partners, we have identified four strategies that are applied by organisations to derive products. The four strategies are: Tight Collaboration, Product Centric, Experience and Hierarchy. For each strategy, its characteristics and associated advantages and disadvantages are discussed. Each strategy is illustrated with an industry example.