Panel 1: SPL in the Cloud Era

Thursday, Sep 06, 14:00 - 15:30

Moderator: Tomoji Kishi

Panelists: Ivica Crnkovic, Jaejoon Lee, Natsuko Noda and Klaus Schmid

Cloud computing is becoming a big trend in information technology. It has various impacts on software and software development. It could also have a great impact on software product lines. One possibility is SPL for the cloud, i.e. development of family of cloud applications or services using SPL. Other possibility is SPL by the cloud, i.e. development methods or environment using cloud technologies. In the past SPLC conferences, there were papers and workshops that handle cloud or service related issues. It is worthy to discuss the current status, challenges and also visions of SPL for/by the Cloud. In this panel, we examine the issues from various aspects.

Panel 2:  “PLE:  Engineering Beyond Software”

Friday, Sep 07, 11:00 - 12:30

Moderator: Paul Clements

Panelists: Christa Schwanninger, John McGregor, Rick Flores and Charles Krueger

According to http://www.splc.net/history.html, SPLC 2012 is the 18th event in the SPLC family of conferences and workshops, a lineage dating back 17 years. All 18 events have explicitly dealt with software product lines: “Software” is either in the title, or in the first line or two of the event’s description.  Similarly, a recent on - line search revealed that every book about product lines or product line engineering is about  software product lines.

The clear implication is that, in this community, software is seen as the primary focus and output of product line practice. The purpose of this panel is to explore and promote the long - stated but under - utilized principle of software product lines - that the shared assets need not just be software.  In fact, there is a growing body  of recent experience to suggest that, while the underlying principles of product line practice remain viable, product - specific software may be among the least important outputs of the product production step. Requirements, designs, test plans and test cases, user documentation, project management artifacts, and more may present the most profitable opportunities for exploiting commonality and managing variation. In fact, software need not be produced at all.

This panel will explore product line engineering as a generalization of software product line practice, explore whether it is time for the software product line community to embrace the larger paradigm, discuss what that would mean, and how doing so might effect our community.