The challenges of broadening the scope of software product families

The issues related to challenges involved in broadening the scope of software product families are discussed. The trends of convergence, end-to-end solutions, shortened innovation and R&D cycles and differentiation through software engineering capabilities have led to the development and broadening the scope of their product families. This broadening is facing the problems including decreasing complete commonality, increasing partial commonality, overengineered architecture, maturity of product categories, and unresponsiveness of platform. To address these problems, two alternative approaches to software reuse were introduced that involve hierarchical software product family and compensation-oriented method. The problems associated with these approaches are better suited for broad-scoped product families. In addition to this, other alternatives have been developed that cross organizational boundaries and/or involve the open source software community.