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.