Five years of product line engineering in a small company

In 1999, a new team at MARKET MAKER Software AG began to develop a software product line for managing and displaying stock market data and financial market news. The basic idea was to use Web technology in all applications for delivering services to customers. It soon turned out that the company had to change both the processes and the organization. This report summarizes the changes made and the lessons learned over the past five years, when the product line idea was introduced into a small company which faced the pressure to quickly market the first product line instances.