A Comparative Survey of Economic Models for Software Product Lines

Software product line engineering aims at achieving systematic reuse by exploiting commonalities among related products in order to reduce cost and time-to market. Before adopting this approach, organizations are likely to estimate the benefits they can expect to achieve and the level of investment required to transition to product line engineering. Several economic models and analysis approaches have been developed in order to help make a sound business case. There is a need to review the existing approaches in order to better understand the overall landscape of economic models. To this objective, this paper provides an overview of some existing economic models and discusses important issues and directions in product line economic modeling.