A Systematic Review of Tracing Solutions in Software Product Lines
This work addresses the challenge of maintaining complex and flexible software systems for developers and organizations, but it is incremental as it reviews existing literature without introducing new methods.
The authors conducted a systematic literature review to assess the current state of traceability solutions in Software Product Lines, finding that such solutions are often implemented only for specific constraints like certification and are not systematically adopted.
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.