The Business of Software Product Family: An Empirical Survey

The software product family approach aims at curtailing the concept of "reinventing the wheel" in software development process. It provides means for reuse of software assets, thus reducing considerably, development time and cost of software products to capture market segments. Business factor has been highlighted as one of the critical dimensions in software product family approach. Doing the business of software product family requires comprehensive knowledge and expertise of key business process areas. In this paper we highlighted some of the key business process areas and their aspects peculiar to software product family. A number of organizations dealing with software product family business were surveyed to get feedback about how effectively they are doing the business of software product family. The survey leads to the conclusion that software product family requires comprehensive alignment of inter-disciplinary business strategies in a complex global market.