Software Engineering Institute

This report is another in a series of Software Engineering Institute (SEI) case studies of organizations that have adopted the software product line approach for developing systems. It details the story of Salion, Inc., an enterprise software company providing Revenue Acquisition Management solutions tailored to the unique needs of automotive suppliers. Salion's solutions enable suppliers to organize and manage their disparate customer-interfacing activities as one coordinated business process, resulting in higher revenues, profit margins, and customer satisfaction.  

This case study is unique in that Salion did not have substantial experience in its application area, although its key designers and strategists were knowledgeable about related domains. Salion pursued a reactive approach to its product line that let it respond flexibly to spontaneous business opportunities and that significantly lowered the cost of adopting the product line paradigm to its software system development. This case study describes relevant dimensions of Salion's context, how it approached several product line practice areas that were key to its strategy, the benefits gained through its product line, lessons learned, and the major thematic aspects of the Salion story.