Bridging the Gap between Software Variability and System Variant Management: Experiences from an Industrial Machinery Product Line (bibtex)
by Stefan Fischer, Lukas Linsbauer, Roberto E. Lopez-Herrejon, Alexander Egyed and Rudolf Ramler
Abstract:
Companies that develop complex systems often do so in the form of product lines, where each product variant can be configured to a certain degree to fit a customer's specific requirements. Features cannot be combined arbitrarily in a product line. The knowledge which features require or exclude each other is represented in form of variability models. Unfortunately, in practice, such variability models do not exist or they are oriented towards the needs and viewpoints of specific organizational units, e.g. sales, manufacturing, hardware engineering, or software development. In this paper we present our experiences in building a variability model for the highly configurable software part of a complex mechatronic system produced by one of our industrial partner companies. The company already had support and processes for product variant management in place for sales and hardware manufacturing. However, the corresponding variability model was at the level of the overall system and excluded the variability of the software part. The paper discusses the resulting problems and challenges and describes the approach we selected to bridge the gap that existed between product variants and software configurations. The goal and driving motivation for our work was the improvement of the software development process and specifically the testing of software variants. The paper also shows how software configuration and testing activities can benefit from an appropriate variability model.
Reference:
Stefan Fischer, Lukas Linsbauer, Roberto E. Lopez-Herrejon, Alexander Egyed and Rudolf Ramler: Bridging the Gap between Software Variability and System Variant Management: Experiences from an Industrial Machinery Product Line, in Proceedings of the 41st Euromicro Conference on Software Engineering and Advanced Applications, (EUROMICRO-SEAA 2015), Madeira, Portugal, 2015.
Bibtex Entry:
@Conference{DBLP:conf/euromicro/0006LLER15,
  author    = {Stefan Fischer and Lukas Linsbauer and Roberto E. Lopez{-}Herrejon and Alexander Egyed and Rudolf Ramler},
  title     = {Bridging the Gap between Software Variability and System Variant Management: Experiences from an Industrial Machinery Product Line},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the 41st Euromicro Conference on Software Engineering and Advanced Applications, (EUROMICRO-SEAA 2015), Madeira, Portugal},
  year      = {2015},
  pages     = {402--409},
  abstract  = {Companies that develop complex systems often do so in the form of
	product lines, where each product variant can be configured to a
	certain degree to fit a customer's specific requirements. Features
	cannot be combined arbitrarily in a product line. The knowledge which
	features require or exclude each other is represented in form of
	variability models. Unfortunately, in practice, such variability
	models do not exist or they are oriented towards the needs and viewpoints
	of specific organizational units, e.g. sales, manufacturing, hardware
	engineering, or software development. In this paper we present our
	experiences in building a variability model for the highly configurable
	software part of a complex mechatronic system produced by one of
	our industrial partner companies. The company already had support
	and processes for product variant management in place for sales and
	hardware manufacturing. However, the corresponding variability model
	was at the level of the overall system and excluded the variability
	of the software part. The paper discusses the resulting problems
	and challenges and describes the approach we selected to bridge the
	gap that existed between product variants and software configurations.
	The goal and driving motivation for our work was the improvement
	of the software development process and specifically the testing
	of software variants. The paper also shows how software configuration
	and testing activities can benefit from an appropriate variability
	model.},
  bibsource = {dblp computer science bibliography, http://dblp.org},
  biburl    = {http://dblp.uni-trier.de/rec/bib/conf/euromicro/0006LLER15},
  doi       = {10.1109/SEAA.2015.57},
  file      = {:Conferences\\SEAA 2015 - Bridging the Gap between Software Variability and System Variant Management\\Bridging the Gap between Software Variability and System Variant Management-preprint.pdf:PDF},
  timestamp = {Wed, 17 Feb 2016 10:14:43 +0100},
  keywords  = {FWF M1421, FWF P25513},
  url       = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/SEAA.2015.57},
}
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