Patrick Donohoe,
Software Engineering Institute,
Carnegie Mellon University


Download Slides HERE




About the Webinar: RYMA's November 11th Webinar was presented by Patrick Donohoe of the SEI. This is part two of a three-part series on Software Product Line Management. Also watch for part three "An Implementation and Maintenance Case Study."

Software product lines have emerged as a new software development paradigm of great importance. A software product line is a set of software intensive systems sharing a common, managed set of features, that satisfy the specific needs of a particular market segment or mission and that are developed from a common set of core assets in a prescribed way.

Organizations developing a portfolio of products as a software product line are experiencing order-of-magnitude improvements in cost, time to market, staff productivity, and quality of the deployed products. A product line succeeds because the commonalities shared by the software products can be exploited to achieve economies of production.

The SEI Framework for Software Product Line Practice is a web-based document that describes essential activities and practices that organizations must master in order to successfully adopt a product line approach.

Webinar attendees will gain a basic understanding of

• how the framework codifies existing best practices for software product line
• show the software engineering, technical management, and organizational management practice areas of the framework support the three essential activities of software product line development

Background Reading:
Northrop, Linda & Clements, Paul. A Framework for Software Product Line Practice
Software Product Lines: Practices and Patterns.


About the Presenter: Patrick Donohoe is a Senior Member of the Technical Staff at the Carnegie Mellon University Software Engineering Institute, working in the Research, Technology, and System Solutions Program. His current interests are analysis modeling and production planning for software product lines. He has participated in several product line technical probes and architecture evaluations and is also an instructor in the SEI's Software Product Line Curriculum. Donohoe holds a bachelor's degree in mathematics and a master's degree in computer science, both from Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland.