Product-centered view vs process-centered view

Abstract

Looking back the history of software engineering, we can observe an alternating cycle of interest on product-centered view vs. process-centered view in software research and practices. From the late 1980's to early 1990's, software process became quite an active field. Activities concerning software process were hot in academia as well as in industry. The interest on software process saw its peak in early 1990's but lost the momentum soon. Then came the fever on software architecture. The book "Software Architecture" by M. Shaw and D. Garlan was published in 1996 and widely read. Design patterns and application frameworks drew attention about the same time, which together indicate a shift of interest from process to product. In 2000's, the interest on processes revived. One phenomenon is the upsurge of interest on the agile process. As software product lines (SPL) contains the word product in the term, it deals with a variety of products but its focus is also on the process of managing development and evolution of a family of similar software products. We will give a perspective on the alternating cycle of interest on product-centered view vs. process-centered view and then characterize SPL in this framework.