A Decision Support Tool for Assessing the Maturity of Software Product Line Process
This is an incremental tool for organizations implementing software product lines to make management decisions based on process maturity assessment.
The authors tackled the problem of assessing the maturity level of software product line processes in organizations by developing a decision support tool using fuzzy logic to handle imprecise variables, validated through four case studies showing it provides a direct evaluation mechanism.
The software product line aims at the effective utilization of software assets, reducing the time required to deliver a product, improving the quality, and decreasing the cost of software products. Organizations trying to incorporate this concept require an approach to assess the current maturity level of the software product line process in order to make management decisions. A decision support tool for assessing the maturity of the software product line process is developed to implement the fuzzy logic approach, which handles the imprecise and uncertain nature of software process variables. The proposed tool can be used to assess the process maturity level of a software product line. Such knowledge will enable an organization to make crucial management decisions. Four case studies were conducted to validate the tool, and the results of the studies show that the software product line decision support tool provides a direct mechanism to evaluate the current software product line process maturity level within an organization.