Software Engineering Institute

This report is a case study of the Control Channel Toolkit (CCT), a software asset base for a software product line of ground-based spacecraft command and control systems built under the direction of the United States National Reconnaissance Office (NRO). Beginning with a characterization of the CCT context and a narration of the history of the effort, the report describes the management and software engineering practices, the software artifacts that were developed, the results that were achieved, and the lessons that were learned. It concludes with an accounting of the measurable benefits the government has already reaped in the initial use of CCT on a specific spacecraft command and control system. With the permission of Addison-Wesley, this report is extracted from Software Product Lines: Practices and Patterns, where it was published with the approval of the National Reconnaissance Office.