Isn a product line just the group of products produced by a single business unit or profit/loss center?
That is what some people mean when they use the term product line (see “A Note on Terminology”), but it’s not what we mean. A product line is a set of products carefully chosen to take simultaneous advantage of commonality and market opportunities. These opportunities could span what is normally produced by a single business unit. For example, the software for commercial avionics and the software for military avionics could span separate business units in a company but be developed as a single product line by a software group that reports to both. Or, a single business unit may be responsible for developing and fielding more than one software product line. In general, a business unit is formed for organizational or financial reasons and may be responsible for (part of) one or more product lines.
That is what some people mean when they use the term, but it’s not what we mean. We define a software product line as a set of software-intensive systems that share a common, managed set of features that satisfy the specific needs of a particular market segment or mission and that are developed from a common set of core assets in a prescribed way. A product line is a set of products carefully chosen to take simultaneous advantage of commonality and market opportunities. These opportunities may or may not span what is normally produced by a single business unit. For example, the software for commercial avionics and the software for military avionics could span separate business units in a company but be developed as a single product line by a software group that reports to both. Or, a single business unit may be responsible for developing and fielding more than one software product line. In general, a business unit is formed for organizational or financial reasons and may be responsible
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