Software Engineering Institute

While it is commonly recognized that legacy assets are, in most cases, an important contributor to the core assets for software product lines, systematic methods for making decisions on when to incorporate legacy assets (versus building new assets) have not been available. Two methods developed by the Software Engineering Institute fill this gap: the Mining Architectures for Product Lines (MAP) method and the Options Analysis for Reengineering (OAR) method. 

Both of these methods, which are described in this report, support different aspects of the Product Parts Pattern, which is applied to develop the core assets for a product line. The MAP method provides a suitability analysis of existing systems' software architectures as candidates for a product line architecture. After an architecture has been developed or chosen, the OAR method provides a disciplined approach for making decisions on rehabilitating legacy assets that may be incorporated into the product line asset base. 

This technical note describes both the MAP and OAR methods, the activities that each involves, and examples of applying them.