Software Product Lines and Configurable Product Bases in Business Applications - A Case from Financial Services

Software Product Lines (SPLs) provide a methodology for creating products based on a common set of core assets. In an environment that is already broadly successful with software reuse, including large-grained software reuse, can Software Product Lines provide a framework to understand the successes of the organization? This paper presents a case study of a large financial institution's internal software development group, and its use of SPL methods and maturities. Adoption of SPL methods in business applications and the organization to support them is examined. Two different SPL maturity levels are observed, and the organization has made explicit choices about maturity levels vs. time to market requirements.