Agile product line engineering - a systematic literature review

This is the PDF file of the manuscript that was accepted for publication. The manuscript have undergone copyediting, typesetting, and review of the resulting proof in its final form. Please note that during the production process, errors may had been discovered which may have affected the content, and all legal disclaimers that apply to the journal pertain. SUMMARY Software product line engineering (SPLE) demands upfront long-term investment in (i) designing a common set of core-assets and (ii) managing variability across the products from the same family. When anticipated changes in these core-assets have been predicted with certain accuracy, SPLE has proved significant improvements. However, when large/complex product-line projects have to deal with changing market conditions, alternatives to supplement SPLE are required. Agile software development (ASD) may be an alternative, as agile processes harness change for the customer's competitive advantage. However, when the aim is to scale agile projects up to effectively manage reusability and variability across the products from the same family, alternatives to supplement agility are also required. As a result, a new approach called agile product line engineering (APLE) advocates integrating SPLE and ASD with the aim of addressing these gaps. APLE is an emerging approach, what implies that organizations have to face with several barriers to achieve its adoption. This paper presents a systematic literature review of experiences and practices on APLE, in which the key findings uncover important challenges about how to integrate the SPLE model with an agile iterative approach to fully put APLE into practice.. . .