Starting Product Lines (II) — Product Line Analysis and Modeling

Abstract

Product line engineering is recognized as a viable approach to large-scale software reuse. This tutorial provides a concise overview of the current state of the art of product line analysis and modeling and aims at giving an understanding of how to identify, analyze, and model commonalities and variabilities. It also provides an overview of the vast range of existing techniques for product line analysis and modeling. In particular, this tutorial provides researchers with a better understanding of the breadth of relevant issues and approaches, while providing industrial practitioners with a profound understanding of best practices they can apply. As the systematic identification and description of commonalities and variabilities are key in product line development to achieving successful reuse, the adequate selection or extension of modeling techniques can be regarded as a key to the overall goal of the SPLC. The modeling tutorial is a half-day tutorial, however, it can be combined with the tutorial titled “Starting Software Product Lines (I) — Systematic Product Line Planning and Adoption” to yield a full-day tutorial covering the early phases of product line development.