Product management for software product lines: an unsolved problem?

The goal of this article is to call attention to an area that is yet not sufficiently researched: product management for software product lines (SPLs). Many companies developing standardized software products have adopted product management as a function that coordinates research and development, marketing, sales, and software development. Even though this function coordinates all of these areas, it is traditionally mainly a marketing function and often organized as part of the marketing department. This may be sufficient for "normal" software products, but not in a SPL context, as we will discuss here.