PRODUCT LINE HALL OF FAME

U.S. Naval Research Laboratory: A-7E Operational Flight Program

The A-7E operational flight program (OFP) is the software that assists the pilot of the Navy’s A-7E aircraft to operate the airplane. The OFP was redesigned by the Software Cost Reduction project at the Naval Research Laboratory to show how to apply family-based software development principles in the development of a hard real-time system. Commonalities and variabilities were explicitly identified starting in the requirements specification for the family, and were a strong driving factor in the modular design of the OFP. The OFP design, including a modular structure, a process structure, and a uses relation, was explicitly created and documented to be an engineering model that others could follow. It has had a strong influence on the field of both software engineering and of product line engineering.

References

Len Bass, Paul Clements, and Rick Kazman, Software Architecture in Practice, Addison Wesley, 1998, Chapter 3.