Being proactive pays off

The key to this enterprise-level strategic positioning is understanding the scope of the product line. A product line´s scope states what systems an organization would be willing to build as part of its product line and what systems it would not. In other words, it defines what´s in and what´s out. Explicitly scoping the product line lets us examine regions in the neighborhood that are underrepresented by actual products in the marketplace, make small extensions to the product line, and move quickly to fill the gap. In short, a consciously preplanned, proactive product line scope helps organizations take charge of their own fate. The scope feeds other product line artifacts; the requirements, architecture, and components all take their cues for the variabilities they need to provide from the scope statement.