Providing Feedback from Application to Family Engineering - The Product Line Planning Game at the Testo AG

Product line organizations need to continuously invest into their product line infrastructure to minimize its degeneration and thus maximize its viability. Besides feedback on a strategic level to monitor changing customer requirements, technical feedback with respect to reusing product line components needs to be provided from application to family engineering. After successfully installing a product line at Testo, such a feedback loop on the technical level was established. Our strategy in this relatively small development organization was to adapt the agile practice "planning game" to their product line context. The results of three runs conducted so far show that the product line planning game is an efficient means to establish a feedback loop from application to family engineering. Testo will continue using the product line planning game in the future.