Abstract
The notion of software product families is becoming more and more popular, both in research and in industry. There is no single best product family approach that is suitable for all, since each product family has its unique context. Such a context comprises elements such as scope, organization, and business strategy. As these elements can change over time, the product family approach may have to evolve with them. In this paper we describe our ideas for a method to assess the variability approach of an existing product family, and to improve that approach to match the changing context. This is illustrated in a case study from the medical imaging domain. This product family in question started out with only a few family members, but over time, the growth in the number of different applications and new application domains have put higher variability demands on the family. These changes also require an evolution in the product family approach. We will describe the current product family approach and the changing requirements on this approach. We also performed a partially automated analysis of the variation to give us a good overview of the way variation is currently handled in the system. Based on that, a direction for evolving the product family approach is proposed.
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Wijnstra, J.G. (2004). Evolving a Product Family in a Changing Context. In: van der Linden, F.J. (eds) Software Product-Family Engineering. PFE 2003. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 3014. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-24667-1_9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-24667-1_9
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