Software Product-Line Engineering: A FamilyBased Software Development Process

"It is in the "how to do it" part that this book excels, because it illustrates a process that has been successfully applied to reduce costs for organizations that develop large programming systems. With the help of this book, many more can learn how to exploit the idea of program families and bring about a substantial improvement in the state of practice in the software industry." --David Lorge Parnas

Many organizations have mastered the practice of software development, yet few have become truly efficient at software production. With the adoption of an efficient, systematic software production method, organizations can gain significant competitive advantages, including reduced time to market, better schedule predictability, more reliable code, and decreased costs. Software Product-Line Engineering provides the actionable information and proven tactics necessary to effect organizational change and make your future software projects more successful.

The authors outline a systematic method for rapid software production through the FAST (Family-Oriented Abstraction, Specification, and Translation) process, a revolutionary commercial product developed at AT&T that continues to evolve at Lucent Technologies. FAST uses practical domain engineering to decrease the time and effort necessary to develop, deliver, and maintain software. Any software development projects currently using C, C++, or Java can easily incorporate the FAST model and quickly reap the benefits of a more efficient software methodology.