A Case Study in Software Product Lines - The Case of the Mobile Game Domain

Software product lines (SPL) processes are gradually being adopted by many companies in several domains. A particular domain where the adoption of such processes may bring relevant benefits is the mobile applications domain given the big diversity of handsets, although the characteristics of this domain usually create barriers to apply these processes in practice, such as, restrictions of memory size and processing power and different API implementations by different manufacturers. In this context, this work presents briefly a practical approach to implement core assets in a SPL applied to the mobile game domain combining the good practices from the already published processes and describes in details a case study performed with the application of this approach, based on three different adventure mobile games. The results of the case study have shown the approach can be suitable for the domain in question.

1. Introduction

One of the key factors for improving quality, productivity and consequently reducing costs in software development is the adoption of software reuse – the process of creating software systems from existing software rather than building them from scratch [1]. Several research activities have been done describing techniques, methods and processes in software reuse area [2] and different efforts have been made to apply the concepts of this area in practice with successful results [3], including big companies such as Hewlett-Packard and Bosch.