Practical evaluation of software product family architectures

Faster time-to-market and decreased development and maintenance costs are goals most companies are aiming at. Product family engineering provides a means of achieving these goals. Product family architecture is the key issue in family engineering. However, companies have to decide how to adopt product family engineering and how to develop their software product family architecture. This paper introduces the basic issues essential to product family architecture development, explores three different approaches to applying product family architectures in industrial settings, and finally presents the evaluation results through an evaluation model of software product families