APPLIES-motivation
Which specific needs in a company might be addressed by following a software product line approach?
It identifies drivers that motive the adoption of a product line engineering approach in an organization.
APPLIES-preparation
To what extent an organization is prepared for adopting a product line production approach?
It evaluates to what extent an organizaton is prepared to transit towards a product line approach and helps users to identify points where particular attention is necessary
Summary charts
What are my results?
They present a quantitative and graphical analysis about the organization’s performance
in the dimensions under evaluation
What is it?
APPLIES stands for framework for evaluAting organization’s motivation and Preparedness for adoPting product LInES. This framework intends to provide quality information to organizations that want to know whether adopting a product line engineering approach is convenient or not to their case
APPLIES considers:
Opportunities, threats, weaknesses and strengths that can motivate a technology change addressed from a software product line-based approach.
Operational, technical and economic conditions that result in opportunities, threats, weaknesses and strengths that an organization should face when a product line engineering approach is introduced.
Using APPLIES is free! It takes only four steps
1. Download our spreadsheet
2. Click on the option “enable macros” (macro security level should be set at medium level).
3. Answer the questions that belong to APPLIES-motivation and APPLIES-preparation.
4. Analyze the resulting charts
What kinds of organizations does APPLIES address?
Organizations that have heard about software product lines and aren’t sure if this alternative is convenient to their case or not.
Who will use APPLIES?
Consultants, project managers, technical leaders or any person interested in adopting a product line engineering approach
When is APPLIES useful?
When organizations want information that support them deciding in favor or against adopting a software product line approach
Latest News
The APPLIES framework is being developed iteratively. The latest version available is APPLIES V2. Soon we will launch a new version that integrates and consolidates the results obtained in differnt empirical experiences to improve APPLIES and make it more relevant for those interested in adopting a product line engineering approach.
Second version (V2)
This version is the result of improving previous version based on the results of evaluating APPLIES retrospectively with a software company and interviewing five experts in product line engineering. Details[…]
Read moreFirst version (V1.0b2)
This version introduces the first version of APPLIES. This version was evaluated by two academic experts.
Details about this version are avaiable here
Read morePart one
APPLIES Motivation
This part of APPLIES uses a set of concrete “signals”, called henceforth adoption drivers, which indicate that a product line approach could be useful for a company. Adoption drivers are positive or negative depending on whether they arise from company strengths, opportunities, threats or weaknesses.
The aim of APPLIES-motivation is to identify to what extent a product line approach could be useful for a company . To this end, APPLIES-motivation allows their users to identify whether a product line is a solution to tackle company’s threats, take advantage of company’s opportunities, strengthen company’s weaknesses or impulse company’s strengths.
How to use APPLIES-motivation?
Go through each adoption driver by selecting those aligned to the company’s case. Currently, APPLIES includes 20 adoption drivers. Most of them correspond to signals reported by companies with experience adopting product lines.
Some adoption drivers are:
“The company gains new customers due to the variability of its products”
Example strength-based adoption driver
“The company has similar products that were implemented in completely different ways”
Example weakeness-based adoption driver
Part two
APPLIES Preparation
This part of the framework gathers key factors spread in the literature for assessing to what extent current and future company practices encourage or impede a product line engineering adoption. Spread factors are organized in a hierarchy of 67 sub-criteria, 17 assessment criteria, and three dimensions. This organization makes possible to evaluate systematically to what extent a company is prepared for adopting a product line production approach.
Subcriteria
Lower level of the hierarchy
Statements that users rate on a scale between “completely disagree” and “completely agree”
Example
“Relevant stakeholders will support the initiative to explore a product line solution”
Assessment criteria
Middle level of the hierarchy
Factors that could encourage or restrain a product line adoption in an organization.
Each assessment criteria has one or more subcriteria.
Example
Domain knowledge
Commitment of the managers
Potential products
Dimensions
Upper level of the hierarcy
Perspectives of analysis from which APPLIES-preparation assesses the level of preparedness of an organization.
Dimensions of analysis
Operational
Technical
Economic
How to use APPLIES-preparation?
Go through each assessment criterion and rate their sub-criteria. APPLIES-preparation automatically computes the score of each assessment criteria and updates the resulting charts. This score is an indicator of the performance of each criterion. Scores with a value near to five represent better performance than scores near to one.
Communication and training materials
Check our Research Gate project page ,you will find there our latest research publications.
User manuals and getting started tutorials are comming soonContact us
If you want to collaborate or you’re interested on using APPLIES contact us we’d love to hear from you!
About
APPLIES is an active research project developed in the frame of Luisa Rincon’s Ph.D. This project is led by Professors Camille Salinesi and Raúl Mazo from Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne University.
This project is supported by the following institutions
