Combining academic research results with industrial real-world experiences, this book provides a broad perspective on product line engineering; managers as well as technical specialists will benefit from reading it. Coverage first presents a common framework for the description of the industrial case studies detailed in the book. Next, it presents the wealth of knowledge that eight companies have gathered during the introduction of the software product line engineering approach in their daily practice. This book will help readers understand all the relevant aspects of applying software product line engineering, regarding business, architecture, process, and organizational issues. Written by practitioners for practitioners, it provides a rich set of useful information for those considering using a product line approach in their organization or who want to improve their current practices.
Frank van der Linden has worked at Philips Medical Systems in The Netherlands since 1999 and been involved with software product lines since then. He was program chair of a series of five workshops on product line engineering, is a member of the steering committee of the SPLC conferences, and co-authored "Software Product Line Engineering" published by Springer in 2005.
Klaus Schmid is professor for software engineering at the University of Hildesheim, Germany. Previously, he was department head for requirements engineering and usability engineering at the Fraunhofer Institute for Experimental Software Engineering (IESE) in Kaiserslautern, Germany. He has been involved in numerous research and industrial projects in product line engineering.
Eelco Rommes worked at Philips Research in the area of software architecture for medical systems from 2001 to 2006. During that time he was involved in several research projects and he has published on software product lines and related topics.