SEDec 13, 2018
A Systematic Review of Tracing Solutions in Software Product LinesZineb Mcharfi, Bouchra El Asri, Abdelaziz Kriouile
Software Product Lines are large-scale, multi-unit systems that enable massive, customized production. They consist of a base of reusable artifacts and points of variation that provide the system with flexibility, allowing generating customized products. However, maintaining a system with such complexity and flexibility could be error prone and time consuming. Indeed, any modification (addition, deletion or update) at the level of a product or an artifact would impact other elements. It would therefore be interesting to adopt an efficient and organized traceability solution to maintain the Software Product Line. Still, traceability is not systematically implemented. It is usually set up for specific constraints (e.g. certification requirements), but abandoned in other situations. In order to draw a picture of the actual conditions of traceability solutions in Software Product Lines context, we decided to address a literature review. This review as well as its findings is detailed in the present article.
SEDec 13, 2018
A Dynamic Tracing Model for Agile Software Product Lines Domain Engineering from Features to Structural Elements: An Approach Based on Dynamic RoutingZineb Mcharfi, Bouchra El Asri, Abdelaziz Kriouile
Even if the benefit of implementing Software Product Lines is well established, adopting such a large system is still a complex choice to make: it is hard to implement, needs a good knowledge of market growth and a clear vision of the enterprise objectives for long term. Therefore, many companies remain unwilling to adopt such an approach, unless they gain flexibility and get guarantees. Flexibility can be achieved by adopting an Agile Software Product Line approach, to make sure changes are rapidly implemented and product adapted to market evolution. Guarantees can be acquired by tracing elements and the relations between them. However, tracing in Agile Software Product Line context still needs to gain maturity as it is costly and therefore rarely adopted. In this paper, we discuss the added value of traceability for Agile Software Product Lines, and present our tracing model inspired from dynamic network routing.