Issue-based Variability Modeling

Variability management is a challenging issue in
product line
requirements engineering. Particular problems include
the
instantiation of variations for individual products,
the long-term
evolution of the product line, the rationale
representation for
variability and the support of issue-based
communication between
geographically distributed stakeholders. To address
the problems,
this dissertation proposes a new methodology called
issue-based
variability modeling by combining variability
management and
rationale management. Rationale management is a
discipline in
software engineering, which deals with the tacit
knowledge that
leads to a system design. To be able to empirically
evaluate issue-
based variability modeling, the meta-model of the
rationale-based
unified software engineering model (RUSE) is combined
with the
meta-model of the orthogonal variability model (OVM)
to obtain a
meta-model for issue-based variability modeling.
Issue-based
variability modeling has been implemented as a
Java-based tool and
was evaluated empirically using several empirical
studies.

Autorentext
Anil Thurimella is working as a requirements manager at Harman Becker Automotive Systems, Germany. He received his master's degree in computational science and enginnering from Technische Universität München in 2004 and passed his doctorial degree on "Issue-based Variability Modeling" in 2008.

Klappentext
Variability management is a challenging issue inproduct line requirements engineering. Particular problems includethe instantiation of variations for individual products,the long-term evolution of the product line, the rationalerepresentation for variability and the support of issue-basedcommunication between geographically distributed stakeholders. To addressthe problems, this dissertation proposes a new methodology calledissue-based variability modeling by combining variabilitymanagement and rationale management. Rationale management is adiscipline in software engineering, which deals with the tacitknowledge that leads to a system design. To be able to empiricallyevaluate issue-based variability modeling, the meta-model of therationale-based unified software engineering model (RUSE) is combinedwith the meta-model of the orthogonal variability model (OVM)to obtain a meta-model for issue-based variability modeling.Issue-based variability modeling has been implemented as aJava-based tool and was evaluated empirically using several empiricalstudies.