Exploring Architecture Design Alternatives for Global Software Product Line Engineering

Current trends in software engineering show that large software projects have to operate with teams which are working in different locations. An analysis of current global software engineering literature shows that the focus has been basically on single system development. Yet, very often organizations do not aim to develop a single product but a product line for a particular market segment. Unfortunately, the notion of global software development has not been explicitly addressed in product line engineering. We introduce and define the notion of global software product line engineering (GSPLE) to integrate global software engineering paradigm with the software product line engineering paradigm. Based on an analysis of architectural approaches in both paradigms we define the space of the different software architecture design alternatives for GSPLE. We illustrate the architecture design alternatives using examples of an industrial context.

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