Product Platforms in Software Development

The concepts of product families, product platforms and derivative products are as applicable to intangible software products as they are to tangible physical products. In both cases, firms can develop a family of products based on a common platform instead of starting from zero every time. Well-designed platform architectures for software products provide productivity benefits and enable rapid growth in market share and revenue. If the developer builds and communicates methods by which others can build modules that operate in or on the underlying platform, it can become the standard or basis of large-scale innovation. A product platform is a set of subsystems and interfaces that form a common structure from which a stream of derivative products can be efficiently developed and produced. A model of the architecture of software products is presented, and case examples are offered showing platform design and management in action.