Applying architecture preservation core for product line stretching

The product line engineering approach is receiving a broad interest to decrease the cost of development and time to market, and to increase product quality as software becomes more and more important for companies in all markets. Although a significant amount of research has been done to define a method for introducing product line engineering in an organization, these methods are limited when a product line stretches over time. When stretching a product line, the evolution of a product line and its products may require fundamental change of the software architecture and consequently result in discontinuous evolutions. In this paper, we discuss the issues of software architecture with respect to discontinuing evolution and present an economic model based on the architecture preservation core concept to influence the product line stretching decision.