Software Product Line Engineering

This lecture is focussing on a specific field of Software Engineering - the so called Software Product Line Engineering.

This is, on the development of groups of products that vary in certain features but nevertheless have a lot of commonalities.
Plenty of companies all over the world are facing the problem of how to develop such product lines effiiciently. For example most car radios of a company look more or less the same, do more or less the same and still have some differences. The same holds for cell phones or software that is targetting a world wide market with slightly different requirements.

The reports of companies having adopted a product line approach are talking of faster development and of better products. But the reports also tell about some problems doing it.

In the lecture we will examine the impact that product line development has on the different facettes of projects. That is on software development, on management of variability, on project management, on tooling, on teams etc. We will understand what has to be done to change from stand alone projects to product lines - and why it is not that easy.

For mode details on product lines look for example for Product Lines at the Software Engineering Institute,  Pittsburgh, USA.

All lectures, the lab and even the examination will be in English.

The practical part of the lecture on Software Product Line Engineering consists of 10 dates. The exercises will be done in teams of 2 students each.

We will look at different topics in the field of software product lines. You will find out how to identify and to extract variability from simple projects. You will implement different solutions for exchanging functionality in code. In the end, you will have a better understanding about the development of product lines and the challenges that such an approach imposes.

It is supposed that you have good knowledge about software engineering, software design and programming.

There will be an oral examination at the end of the semester. All examinations will be in English (But the examination is about product lines and not about your English skills!).

The lab has to be passed succesfully before the examination can be made. Registration for the examination is done via OBS.

The lecture will be held as traditional frontal teaching in English.

You will get the slides of the lectures and other material in Moodle. The slides, the exercises, the discussions and even the examinations will be held in English.