Software Engineering Institute

Software product line practice is an effective strategy for developing families of software-intensive products. Business modeling is a fundamental practice that provides input into a number of decisions that are made by organizations using or considering using the product line strategy. This report presents the Structured Intuitive Model of Product Line Economics (SIMPLE), a general-purpose business model that supports the estimation of the costs and benefits in a product line development organization. The model supports decisions such as whether to use a product line strategy in a specific situation, the specific strategy to apply, and the appropriateness of acquiring or building specific assets. This report illustrates the model's scope by presenting several scenarios and its usefulness by integrating it into several product line practice patterns. The report ends with a description of future work aimed at making the model usable by product line practitioners.