Issues in strategic management of large-scale software product line development

Abstract

This thesis reflects on the issues and challenges large software product engineering managers face. Software is hard to engineer on a small scale, but at a larger scale, engineering and management tasks are even more difficult. In the context of software product line evolution, the goal of this work is to look at current managing practice, through the lens of Systems Thinking as well as my own experience. We develop a System Dynamics model to operationalize the notions examined here and run a variety of experiments representative of real situations, from which we learn some lessons and recommend policies that engineering leaders may use to manage large-scale software development organizations. During the course of this research, we found that the model developed intuitively matched experiences in the software industry. Product line engineering and tighter deadlines force software producers to require more accurate control of the production capability of their development organization. In the context of many release cycles and multiple simultaneously active releases, we present some findings about scheduling of the workload, which the engineering manager may leverage to make decisions about the allocation of work. The research presented here from the point of view of the producers of software can help other stakeholders in the software ecosystem understand the challenges these organizations face and the reasoning behind choices made by these providers.