Product Line Benefits

There are many benefits to establishing a product line. Principally, the product line leads to reduced cost and faster time to market for new projects. Also, a product line approach to software development will lead to a more portable staff because the architecture is similar from project to project. Finally, risks are also reduced and quality is improved because the architecture has been proven on multiple projects.

Reduced Cost

Just as demonstrated by Eli Whitney and Henry Ford, adopting a product line approach to developing and maintaining applications can dramatically reduce costs through the specialization of roles and the reuse of core assets that otherwise would have needed to be developed or acquired and maintained separately for each application.

Improved Time to Market

For many organizations, cost is not the primary driver for product line adoption. Reusable components speed the time it takes to get a product out the door. Product lines allow organizations to take advantage of the shared features of their product lines and to add features particular to the products they are building.

Flexible Staffing and Productivity

There is much more flexibility when moving people around the organization since they become familiar with the set of shared tools, components, and processes of each product line. A critical product development effort can benefit from using people from other product development teams who are familiar with the product line's core assets. The learning curve is shortened because the shared assets of the product line are familiar to staff who work on the products in the product line.

Increased Predictability

In a shared product line, several products are developed using a set of common core assets, a shared architecture and production plan, and people with experience for creating products within the product line. These core assets and architecture are proven on several products. Project managers and other stakeholders will have more confidence in the success of new projects within the product line because of the proven set of core assets and people.

Higher Quality

Because core assets serve the needs of more than one project, they must be of higher quality. Also, multiple projects exercise the shared assets in more ways than a single project would, so the shared assets will have a much higher quality. In addition, the shared architecture of the product line is also proven through implementation by several projects.

Not only are core assets of higher quality, but the applications that are developed from them are of higher quality. This stems from the high quality of the core assets, staff that have higher expertise, more project predictability, and a proven quality assurance process at the product line level.