Product Line Engineering

DNV Software Case Study

Moshfiqur Rahman

About DNV

Globally distributed company with 300 offices in 100 countries and about 5800 employees.

Classification, certification, consulting service related to risk, safety and quality

Target industries are shipping, oil, gas, rail, automotive and food.

One of the World’s leading providers for such service

About DNV Software

Independent business unit within DNV

100 developers

Common support for 3 productions centers for DNV

Architecture: Second generation BRIX platform

Process: BRIX platform development process, alignment of application engineering process

Three Product Centers

Three Product Centers (Contd.)

SESAM

Development started in 1960s

Strength assessment for large structures in marine and offshore industries

Several technology shifts and reengineering

Well aligned on a common platform and architecture

Three Product Centers (Contd.)

Risk Management Software (RMS):

Started in 1980s

Develop products for risk and consequence analysis for offshore industries

Acquired by DNV in 1990

Diverse product line

Common mathematical model

Common framework

Three Product Centers (Contd.)

Nauticus:Major development project from early 1990s

Initiated by DNV maritime business area

Improvement of wide range of services for the maritime industry

Software Factory

Support the 3 product centers

Cost-effective development, maintenance and support for high quality software

Software platform – BRIX

Central role in DNV software product line engineering

Product Line at DNV Software

Two generations of product lineFirst generation

– performed at the product center level.

– development team within each center carried out product line engineering

Second generation

– performed at the DNV software level

– aims to use the potential synergies across the product centers

Product Line at DNV Software

ChallengesAchieving a common platform

Technology alignment

Reuse for in-house development

Balancing short-term and long-term issues with respect to timing, cost, benefit, and product life-cycle issues

First Generation Product Line Engineering

Targeted to Nauticus

Business goals Efficient, streamlined and higher quality services towards the customers

Up-to-date information about vessels and fleet

System level goalsFlexible configuration to meet the organization evolution

Efficient global integration

Reuse of existing and new applications and information

First Generation Product Line Engineering

Establish a common product model

Required a substantial effort – 40 man years

Developed from (almost) scratch

Organized in 3 sub-projects:Tools – Focused on delivering end user tools

Common Ship Description (CSD) – focused on establishing a common information model that defined all the data entries for Nauticus

BRIX – focused on delivering a common software platform

First Generation Product Line Engineering

Developed on Microsoft COM technology

Series of mock-ups

Shared vision among project team, organization, the customer and top-level management

Second Generation Product Line Engineering

Started in 2000

Support, align and integrate all 3 product centers

Tools and CSD sub-projects become Nauticus product center

BRIX sub-project become Software factory unit

Developed in Microsoft .NET technology

New variability requirements added

Major concepts from first generation were refined and re-implemented

Second Generation Product Line Engineering

Scope was all DNV software products

Designed to be open

Business benefit maximized by

Under specified architecture

Modularized features

Open and transparent underlying technology

Potential improvement achievedReduced life-cycle costShorter time to marketHigh quality productsHigher degree of reuseReduced duplicate functionalityAligning the product centers and product lines

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