The y axis
represents the cumulative costs of application development. The x axis represents the
repetition??”the frequency at which the DSM solution is used. The repetition can be
measured in different ways, and therefore, the x-axis can mean many things:
. Number of product variants: How many applications or products can we build
with the DSM solution? Obviously, the more products we are building, the
more likely is the return on the investment in creating a DSM solution.Work in
product lines suggests that if there are more than three variants then the effort to
build automation pays off (Weiss and Lai, 1999).
Domain-Specific
Modeling
General-purpose
modeling
Repetition
Costs
FIGURE 2.1 Comparative application development costs (cumulative)
36 BUSINESS VALUE
. Number of product versions:DSMdoes not necessitate a product line. Repetition
may occur also when there is a single product with multiple consecutive versions
or con?¬?gurations.
. Number of features within a product: Even inside a single application we may
have several features that all share the same target environment and domain
framework. Consider here a typical ERP system. Although a manufacturer
usually builds only one system, its development requires a lot of repetitive
development actions. There are usually thousands of similar kinds of data
access operations, ?¬?elds, forms, work?¬‚ow actions, and common data elements.
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