A multi-company empirical evaluation of a framework that evaluates the convenience of adopting product line engineering

Companies considering adopting a product line engineering approach should ideally analyze the pros and cons to determine the sound reasons for this decision. In order to support this analysis, in previous work we proposed the APPLIES evaluation framework. This framework provides information to evaluate the convenience of adopting a product line engineering approach. This paper presents an empirical evaluation of APPLIES. This experience includes 18 potential practitioners that used the framework to evaluate the convenience of adopting product line engineering in 19 different companies. The collected evidence was used to evaluate the perceived usefulness, intention to use and ease of use of APPLIES. The results presented increase confidence that APPLIESis a useful tool, but also identify some possibilities for improvement. In addition, four categories for classifying potential adopters of product line engineering emerged during the analysis of the results: unprepared adopter, potential adopter, ready adopter, and unmotivated adopter. These categories could be useful to classify companies that are considering adopting product line engineering.