Product Line Engineering: A Process Improvement Perspective

March 4, 2004

Location: Electrical Engineering/Computer Science Bldg., Room EE/CS 3-180

Meeting Abstract:

Product Line Engineering (PLE) was invented as a productivity enhancement for software development organizations that deliver similar products to many different customers.  The ideas behind software product lines come from different sources from the assembly line to the practices of cut-and-past reuse to observations on which reuse projects succeeded and which failed.

Current approaches to product line engineering are designed to support a set of software/firmware intensive systems addressing a particular market segment or mission created from a common set of core assets in a prescribed fashion. In this talk, we will begin with a high-level definition of product line engineering including some of the benefits and organizational requirements.  The primary focus of the talk, however, will be a discussion of the organizational and process implications behind adopting and supporting a product line strategy.

About the Speaker:

Jeffrey M. Thompson, PhD, is a Senior Software Engineer at Guidant Corporation.  In his work with Guidant's System Process Improvement and Knowledge Engineering (SPIKE) group, Dr. Thompson works with numerous teams throughout the research and development organization to support product line engineering and model based development.  He received his Doctorate from the University of Minnesota in Computer Science with research interests in formal requirements specification for safety critical systems, model driven development, product line engineering and software processes.