A Framework for Innovation System Customization for Product Line-Based Software Businesses

Software Product Line Engineering (SPLE) allows delivering customized software products at reduced costs and time while simultaneously enhancing quality. To realize these benefits, it employs systematic variability management and proactive planning and engineering for reuse which to a significant extent require prescribing features, variants, etc. In an environment of increasingly demanding customers and ongoing pressure on costs, time, and quality, the risk increases that the necessary changes compromise the product line´s envisioned structure and benefits. Innovating and flexibly adapting a product line to changing needs is thus highly challenging. Organizations are faced with a bulk of innovation approaches, models, success factors, etc. while the key challenge remains to establish an innovation management system tailored to an organization´s specific needs. In this paper, we present a conceptual framework designed to supports SPLE organizations in developing a customized innovation system comprised of the elements innovation strategy, structure, process, culture, measurement, incentives, and learning by providing the requirements for these elements derived from the organization´s business characteristics.