Evolution of a bluetooth test application product line: a case study

In this paper, we study the decision making process involved in the five year lifecycle of a Bluetooth software product produced by a large, multi-national test and measurement firm. In this environment, customer change requests either have to be added as a standard feature in the product, or developed as a special customized version of the product. We first discuss the influential factors, such as evolving standards, market share, installed-base, and complexity, which collectively determined how the firm responded to product change requests. We then develop a predictive decision model to test the collective impact of these factors on determining whether to standardize or customize a customer's change request. Finally, we develop and test a customization cost estimation model, for use by software product teams, which specifically accounts for factors unique to the customization stage of a product lifecycle.