My company builds a broadly related group of products, each of which is a group of closely related products. Should I plan to build a single product line or a group of product lines?
This question can be answered by making a business case for each alternative and weighing the costs and benefits. The SEI Structure Intuitive Model for Product Line Economics (SIMPLE) can help with this [Clements 2005a]. We’ve seen this situation in practice many times. Often, the choice is to go with the single, large product line. Examples come from avionics, missile software, embedded engine controllers, and shipboard command and control systems. However, other organizations have chosen separate product lines or even hierarchical product lines. A hierarchical product line is essentially a product line of product lines. The decision depends on the amount of commonality that can be extracted from the broadly related group, how expensive it is to accommodate the needed variation, and how easy it is to communicate and cooperate across the different groups involved. If the products “live” in separate business units, for instance, the organization might find separate product lines to be m
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