Abstract—While there are many success stories of adoption of software product line (SPL) practices in large companies, there is a need to investigate how well the product line strategy works for small organizations and what issues and challenges they could possibly face. This case study provides a comprehensive detailed analysis of a small company’s tendency of adopting Software product line. It also reveals how new trends in software engineering, for example, agile methods interact with product line strategy. We used an ethnographic approach of collecting data by spending some time at a company in China and gathering information through interviews, documents, and studying organizational processes. The collected data was analysed using grounded theory. The findings were evaluated with regard to business, architecture, process and organizational concerns of a company, generally known as BAPO model. In the end, the challenges faced by the company were addressed and potential improvements were suggested to reap the benefits of software product line. The results show that the company is unknowingly using some SPL practices and has a potential to adopt SPL practices fully.
Index Terms—Agile development processes, BAPO model, empirical study, grounded theory, software product lines.
N. Nazar is with School of Software, Dalian University of Technology, China (e-mail: najamnazar@126.com).
T. M. J. Rakotomahefa is with the School of Civil Engineering, Dalian University of Technology, China (e-mail: ymamesoj@outlook.com).
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Cite:N. Nazar and T. M. J. Rakotomahefa, "Analysis of a Small Company for Software Product Line Adoption — An Industrial Case Study," International Journal of Computer Theory and Engineering vol. 8, no. 4, pp. 313-322, 2016.
