This is my presentation given during my Master study lecture of the course Product Line Engineering. I presented here how the DNV Software Company executed product line engineering for their in-house product.

1. Product Line Engineering
DNV Software Case Study
Moshfiqur Rahman

2. 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

3. 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

4. Three Product Centers

5. 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

6. 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

7. 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

8. 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

9. Product Line at DNV Software
 Two generations of product line
 First 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

10. Product Line at DNV Software
 Challenges
 Achieving 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

11. 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 goals
 Flexible configuration to meet the organization evolution
 Efficient global integration
 Reuse of existing and new applications and information

12. 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

13. 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

14. 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

15. 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

16. Potential improvement achieved
Reduced life-cycle cost
Shorter time to market
High quality products
Higher degree of reuse
Reduced duplicate functionality
Aligning the product centers and product lines

17. Thanks for your attention