Introducing the PuLSE approach to an embedded system population at Testo AG

Over the last few years, product line engineering has become a major theme in software engineering research, and is increasingly becoming a central topic of software engineering practice in the embedded domain. Migrating towards a product line approach is not an easy feat. It is even less so, if it is done under tight technology constraints in an embedded environment. It becomes even more difficult if the transition directly aims at integrating two product families into a single product population. In this paper, we discuss our experiences with a project where we successfully dealt with these difficulties and achieved a successful product line transition. In our paper, we strongly emphasize the role of technology transfer, as many facets of product line know-how had to be transferred to guarantee a complete transition to product line engineering. From the experiences of this project many lessons learned can be deduced, which can be transferred to different environments.