This paper summarizes the current state of the art and recent trends in software engineering economics. It provides an overview of economic analysis techniques and their applicability to software engineering and management. It surveys the field of software cost estimation, including the major estimation techniques available, the state of the art in algorithmic cost models, and the outstanding research issues in software cost estimation.

Software engineering economics

This paper aims at identifying some of the key factors in adopting or running a company-wide software reuse program. Key factors are derived from empirical evidence of reuse practices, as emerged from a survey of projects for the introduction of reuse in European companies: 24 such projects performed from 1994 to 1997 were analyzed using structured interviews. The projects were undertaken in both large and small companies, working in a variety of business domains, and using both object-oriented and procedural development approaches. Most of them produce software with high commonality between applications, and have at least reasonably mature processes. Despite that apparent potential for success, around one-third of the projects failed. Three main causes of failure were not introducing reuse-specific processes, not modifying nonreuse processes, and not considering human factors. The root cause was a lack of commitment by top management, or nonawareness of the importance of those factors, often coupled with the belief that using the object-oriented approach or setting up a repository seamlessly is all that is necessary to achieve success in reuse. Conversely, successes were achieved when, given a potential for reuse because of commonality among applications, management committed to introducing reuse processes, modifying nonreuse processes, and addressing human factors.

Success and failure factors in software reuse

Product derivation in software product families: a case study

Traceability of software artefacts has been recognised as an important factor for supporting various activities in the software system development process. In general, the objective of traceability is to improve the quality of software systems. More specifically, traceability information can be used to support the analysis of implications and integration of changes that occur software systems; the maintenance and evolution of software systems; the reuse of software system components by identifying and comparing requirements of new and existing systems; the testing of software system components; and system inspection, by indicating alternatives and compromises made during development. Traceability enables system acceptance by allowing users to better understand the system and contributes to a clear and consistent system documentation. Over the last few years, the software and system engineering communities have developed a large number of approaches and techniques to address various aspects of traceability. Research into software traceability has been mainly concerned with the study and definition of different types of traceability relations; support for the generation of traceability relations; development of architectures, tools, and environments for the representation and maintenance of traceability relations; and empirical investigations into organisational practices regarding the establishment and deployment of traceability relations in the software development life cycle. However, despite its importance and the work resulted from numerous years of research, empirical studies of traceability needs and practices in industrial organisations have indicated that traceability support is not always satisfactory. As a result, traceability is rarely established in existing industrial settings. In this article, we present a roadmap of research and practices related to software traceability and identify issues that are still open for further research. Our roadmap is organised according to the main topics that have been the focus of software traceability research.

Software Traceability : A Roadmap

The product line and component-based approaches to software engineering both hold the potential to significantly increase the level of reuse in industrial software development and maintenance. They also have complementary strengths, since they address the problem of reuse at opposite ends of the granularity spectrum; product line development essentially supports “reuse in the large” while component based development supports “reuse in the small.” This paper describes a method, Kobr A, that cleanly integrates the two paradigms into a systematic, unified approach to software development and maintenance. Key synergies resulting from this integration include support for the rapid and flexible instantiation of system variants, and the provision of methodological support for component-based framework development.

Component-based product line development: the KobrA approach

Software product lines have recently been introduced as one of the most promising advances for efficient software development. Yet upon close examination, there are few guidelines or methodologies available to develop and deploy product lines beyond existing domain engineering approaches. The latter have had mixed success within commercial enterprises because of their deployment complexity, lack of customizability, and especially their misplaced focus, that is on domains as opposed to products. To tackle these problems we developed the PuLSETM (Product Line Software Engineering) methodology for the purpose of enabling the conception and deployment of software product lines within a large variety of enterprise contexts. This is achieved via product-centric focus throughout the phases of PuLSETM, customizability of its components, incremental introduction capability, maturity scale for structured evolution, and adaptations to a few main product development situations. PuLSETM is the result of a bottom-up effort: the methodology captures and leverages the results (the lessons learned) from our technology transfer activities with our industrial customers. We present in this paper the main ideas behind PuLSETM and illustrate the methodology with a running example taken from our transfer experience.

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PuLSE: a methodology to develop software product lines

Small and medium-sized enterprises work under heavy constraints: They need to be very flexible and fast in their reaction to customer requests, thus limiting their possibility for long-term planning. In a partially publicly funded project, the authors have started to apply their Product Line Software Engineering method developed at Fraunhofer IESE, in six small and medium-sized companies addressing six different domains. The article presents first experience and lessons learned from 24 months of project work; including first results within the companies.

/pdf/applying-product-line-concepts-in-small-and-medium-sized-55lbp5i8xo.pdf

Applying Product Line Concepts in Small and Medium-Sized Companies

Jean-Marc DeBaud Oliver Flege Peter Knauber Fraunhofer Institute for Experimental Fraunhofer Institute for Experimental Fraunhofer Institute for Experimental Software Engineering (IESE) Software Engineering (IESE) Software Engineering (IESE) Sauetwiesen 6 Sauerwiesen 6 Sauetwiesen 6 D-67661 Kaiserslautern, Germany D-67661 Kaiserslautern, Germany D-67661 Kaiserslautern, Germany debaud @ iese.fhg.de flege@ iese.fhg.de knauber@iese.fhg.de

PuLSE-DSSA—a method for the development of software reference architectures

To successfully adopt a product line approach an organization needs to define its adoption goals, conceive a strategy, and implement a plan to achieve those goals. This process is repeated for each business unit and individual affected by the product line adoption. This paper describes how the characteristics of the market, organization, business unit, and individual influence product line adoption goals, strategies, and plans.

Peter Knauber

Papers

PuLSE: a methodology to develop software product lines

Applying Product Line Concepts in Small and Medium-Sized Companies

PuLSE-DSSA—a method for the development of software reference architectures

Exploring the Context of Product Line Adoption

Software-Produktlinien. Methoden, Einführung und Praxis