Analysis of risks in developing a software product line

Historically manufacturing has been applying Product Line methodologies much longer than Software Engineering has, which has only been using these methodologies over the last decade or so. In that context manufacturing 'lessons learned' over many years of application can be applied to the field of Software Engineering Product Lines. Specifically, this evaluation will look at risks and risk management issues concerning the movement of an organization with individual products and no Product Platforms to an organization where individual products have been consolidated into a Product Line and a Product Platform has been created to engender the transition. When companies have successfully made this transition the gains have been a significant market share advance over competitors. It is in these situations that risks and Risk Management principles play an extremely important role, failure to identify the proper risks and the management of those risks can hinder the very future of an organization. Twenty principles were identified from the manufacturing standpoint as being important considerations in mitigating risk when moving from individual products to Product Lines. A wide variety of resources were used to identify these manufacturing principles; Harvard Business Review, Sloan Management Review, Management Science were journals used as well as a number of recent manufacturing and business based books. Each principle as shown is based on mitigating a risk. The principle is identified as it relates to the relevance in its application to Software Product Lines and whether or not such a principle exists in the Software Product Line domain. This is followed by a discussion of how the principle could be applied to Software Product Lines.