Developing Mobile Browsers in a Product Line

0 7 4 0 7 4 5 9 / 0 2 / $ 1 7 . 0 0 © 2 0 0 2 I E E E J u l y / A u g u s t 2 0 0 2 I E E E S O F T W A R E 7 3 themselves: Satisfying a particular market segment’s specific needs and operating in a prescribed way require solid requirements and operational management. A product line organization must therefore be a complete product creation and delivery entity that collects and analyzes requirements, creates the products, delivers them to customers or distributors, and supports them after delivery. It functions under a management that has full responsibility for maintaining the core assets and creating and delivering software products. At Nokia, we used a product line to develop mobile browser products that let mobile phone or personal digital assistant users access services over wireless telecommunications networks. We developed the technology first for our own handsets and later distributed it as a software product. We had two reasons to initiate the product line. First, we needed to serve an increasingly heterogeneous customer base. Second, we wanted to benefit from large-scale reuse. Neither of these reasons alone would have justified initiating a new product line. However, the product line approach provided us with tools to achieve both of these goals and was therefore well justified. Our experience at Nokia can serve as a case study for other organizations debating a similar transition.