I attended a Chalk & Talk session with Steve Cook this morning about Software Factories. Just some of the things that were discussed:

Today building software is mostly craftsmanship. Compared to other industries the software industry isn’t very successful. Poor reuse.

Only if you know all the stable and reusable parts or architectural components it makes sense to start building a Software Factory for it. Start bottom up and start small otherwise you will probably fail. You have to know all the details about the parts you like to build a Software Factory for.

One of the basic ideas behind Software Factories: define only the unique features of the system that needs to build. (Other parts can be reused).

Most of the things we currently do are a waste of energy. All of it is redundant work. Automate all the rote and menial tasks. Let people do the interesting work.

The idea is to get a general development environment (VS.NET for example) and load the Domain Specific stuff in to tailor it. The Software Factory knows were you are and what you need at that time and delivers the right assets in the right context.

The Software Factory Schema defines a set of viewpoints and their relationships. A viewpoint describes how to look at things a view is the things you see.

It looks like Microsoft is working hard on some samples of Software Factories. In this talk Steve showed us a little of a Powerpoint presentation that demonstrates how to build an 'online Petshop' by using a Software Factory. Like Steve said, it's only a presentation but I assume they didn't created all the screenshot on the 106 sheets by hand