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Software product lines provide enhanced means for systematic reuse when constructing systems within a particular domain. In order to achieve this, systems in a product line are expected to have a significant amount of commonality. Variability is what distinguishes these systems from one another and is spread across various product line artifacts. This thesis focuses on modeling and managing product line variability. The concept of concerns is proposed as a means of variability modeling. Another proposal is related to the use of context free grammars to represent product line variability and to guarantee that any application derived according to the variability framework thus defined will be a valid one. This approach is evaluated for an example domain, in the light of novel evaluation criteria that are also introduced in the scope of this thesis.

Submitted by Adriely Bruce (adriely_bruce@hotmail.com) on 2016-12-16T15:23:35Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertação - Rafael Normando Cunha.pdf: 2634755 bytes, checksum: 1a601e8e730d9bca00432b2e7038ac0f (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Divisão de Documentação/BC Biblioteca Central (ddbc@ufam.edu.br) on 2016-12-22T13:36:58Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertação - Rafael Normando Cunha.pdf: 2634755 bytes, checksum: 1a601e8e730d9bca00432b2e7038ac0f (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Divisão de Documentação/BC Biblioteca Central (ddbc@ufam.edu.br) on 2016-12-22T13:39:39Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertação - Rafael Normando Cunha.pdf: 2634755 bytes, checksum: 1a601e8e730d9bca00432b2e7038ac0f (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-12-22T13:39:39Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertação - Rafael Normando Cunha.pdf: 2634755 bytes, checksum: 1a601e8e730d9bca00432b2e7038ac0f (MD5) Previous issue date: 2013-12-17 / Agência de Fomento não informada / Software Product Lines enable organizations to develop a number of similar products in the same application domain, which reduces development time and maintenance cost, and increases productivity. Software product line specifications need to be evaluated for improving software. In this context, software inspections aims do guarantee complete, consistent and correct artifacts finding defects in early stages in software lifecycle. In this work, we propose SPLIT (Software Product Line Inspection Technique), which is a set of modelbased inspection techniques for evaluating software product line specifications. A feasibility study was conducted for comparing SPLIT against a defect type-based inspection approach. The object of the feasibility study was a Twitter client software product line specification created for the experiment. The results indicated that the set of techniques found a greater number of defects than a defect type-based inspection approach. A second empirical study was conducted for comparing SPLIT against a defect type-based inspection approach using a real software product line for mobile robot vehicles. This study aimed to verify whether the set of techniques fits real world life-cycle development. The second empirical results supported the feasibility study in which SPLIT found a greater number of defects than a defect type-based inspection approach. Thus, software product line quality assurance can be improved using SPLIT for detecting defects in early stage of development. / Linha de produto de software permite que organizações desenvolvem um número similar de produtos específicos em um mesmo domínio de aplicação, reduzindo o tempo de desenvolvimento e o custo de manutenção, e aumentando a produtividade. Especificações de linha de produto de software necessitam ser avaliadas para aumentar a qualidade do software. Neste cenário, inspeções de software visam garantir que os artefatos estejam completos, consistentes e corretos ao encontrar defeitos em estágios iniciais do ciclo de vida de desenvolvimento. Neste trabalho, é proposta a SPLIT (Software Product Line Inspection Technique), um conjunto de técnicas de inspeção baseada em modelos para avaliar especificações de linha de produto de software. Um estudo de viabilidade foi conduzido para comparar a SPLIT com uma abordagem de inspeção baseada em tipos de defeitos. O objeto do estudo de viabilidade foi um cliente de Twitter desenvolvido para a execução do experimento. Os resultados indicaram que o conjunto de técnicas SPLIT encontrou um número maior de defeitos que uma abordagem de inspeção baseada em tipos de defeitos. Um segundo experimento foi conduzido para comparar a SPLIT com uma abordagem baseada em tipos de defeitos usando uma linha de produto de software real para veículos robóticos móveis. Este estudo visou verificar se o conjunto de técnicas se adaptam ao ciclo de vida de desenvolvimento real. O segundo experimento corroborou o resultado do estudo de viabilidade ao encontrar um número de defeitos maior que uma abordagem de inspeção baseada em tipos de defeitos. Com isso, a garantia da qualidade em linhas de produto de software pode ser melhorada ao utilizar a SPLIT para encontrar defeitos em estágios iniciais do desenvolvimento.

L'ingénierie des lignes de produits logiciels (Software Product Line Engineering-SPLE en Anglais) est une discipline qui met en œuvre des principes de réutilisation pour le développement efficace de familles de produits. Une famille de produits logiciels est un ensemble de logiciels similaires, ayant des fonctionnalités communes, mais néanmoins différents selon divers aspects; nous parlerons des différentes variantes d'un logiciel. L'utilisation d'une ligne de produit permet de développer les nouveaux produits d'une famille plus vite et d'augmenter la qualité de chacun d'eux. Ces avantages sont liés au fait que les éléments communs aux membres d'une même famille (besoin, architecture, code source, etc.) sont réutilisés et adaptés. Créer de toutes pièces une ligne de produits est une tâche difficile, coûteuse et longue. L'idée sous-jacente à ce travail est qu'une ligne de produits peut être créée par la réingénierie de logiciels similaires (de la même famille) existants, qui ont été préalablement développés de manière ad-hoc. Dans ce contexte, la contribution de cette thèse est triple. La première contribution est la proposition d'une approche pour l'identification des liens de traçabilité entre les caractéristiques (features) d'une application et les parties du code source qui les implémentent, et ce pour toutes les variantes d'une application. Ces liens sont utiles pour générer (dériver) de nouveaux logiciels par la sélection de leurs caractéristiques. L'approche proposée est principalement basée sur l'amélioration de la technique conventionnelle de recherche d'information (Information Retrieval –IR en Anglais) et des approches les plus récentes dans ce domaine. Cette amélioration est liée à deux facteurs. Le premier facteur est l'exploitation des informations liées aux éléments communs ou variables des caractéristiques et du code source des produits logiciels analysés. Le deuxième facteur concerne l'exploitation des similarités et des dépendances entre les éléments du code source. Les résultats que nous avons obtenus par expérimentation confirment l'efficacité de notre approche. Dans la deuxième contribution, nous appliquons nos résultats précédents (contribution no 1) à l'analyse d'impact (Change Impact Analysis –CIA en Anglais). Nous proposons un algorithme permettant à un gestionnaire de ligne de produit ou de produit de détecter quelles les caractéristiques (choix de configuration du logiciel) impactées par une modification du code. Cet algorithme améliore les résultats les plus récents dans ce domaine en permettant de mesurer à quel degré la réalisation d'une caractéristique est impactée par une modification. Dans la troisième contribution nous exploitons à nouveau ces liens de traçabilité (contribution No 1) pour proposer une approche permettant de satisfaire deux objectifs. Le premier concerne l'extraction de l'architecture de la ligne de produits. Nous proposons un ensemble d'algorithmes pour identifier les points de variabilité architecturale à travers l'identification des points de variabilité au niveau des caractéristiques. Le deuxième objectif concerne l'identification des liens de traçabilité entre les caractéristiques et les éléments de l'architecture de la ligne de produits. Les résultats de l'expérimentation montre que l'efficacité de notre approche dépend de l'ensemble des configurations de caractéristiques utilisé (disponibles via les variantes de produits analysés). / Software Product Line Engineering (SPLE) is a software engineering discipline providing methods to promote systematic software reuse for developing short time-to-market and quality products in a cost-efficient way. SPLE leverages what Software Product Line (SPL) members have in common and manages what varies among them. The idea behind SPLE is to builds core assets consisting of all reusable software artifacts (such as requirements, architecture, components, etc.) that can be leveraged to develop SPL's products in a prescribed way. Creating these core assets is driven by features provided by SPL products.Unfortunately, building SPL core assets from scratch is a costly task and requires a long time which leads to increasing time-to-market and up-front investment. To reduce these costs, existing similar product variants developed by ad-hoc reuse should be re-engineered to build SPLs. In this context, our thesis proposes three contributions. Firstly, we proposed an approach to recover traceability links between features and their implementing source code in a collection of product variants. This helps to understand source code of product variants and facilitate new product derivation from SPL's core assets. The proposed approach is based on Information Retrieval (IR) for recovering such traceability links. In our experimental evaluation, we showed that our approach outperforms the conventional application of IR as well as the most recent and relevant work on the subject. Secondly, we proposed an approach, based on traceability links recovered in the first contribution, to study feature-level Change Impact Analysis (CIA) for changes made to source code of features of product variants. This approach helps to conduct change management from a SPL's manager point of view. This allows him to decide which change strategy should be executed, as there is often more than one change that can solve the same problem. In our experimental evaluation, we proved the effectiveness of our approach in terms of the most used metrics on the subject. Finally, based on traceability recovered in the first contribution, we proposed an approach to contribute for building Software Product Line Architecture (SPLA) and linking its elements with features. Our focus is to identify mandatory components and variation points of components. Therefore, we proposed a set of algorithms to identify this commonality and variability across a given collection of product variants. According to the experimental evaluation, the efficiency of these algorithms mainly depends on the available product configurations.

Les lignes de produits logicielles constituent une approche permettant de construire et de maintenir une famille de produits logiciels similaires mettant en œuvre des principes de réutilisation. Ces principes favorisent la réduction de l'effort de développement et de maintenance, raccourcissent le temps de mise sur le marché et améliorent la qualité globale du logiciel. La migration de produits logiciels similaires vers une ligne de produits demande de comprendre leurs similitudes et leurs différences qui s'expriment sous forme de caractéristiques (features) offertes. Dans cette thèse, nous nous intéressons au problème de la construction d'une ligne de produits à partir du code source de ses produits et de certains artefacts complémentaires comme les diagrammes de cas d'utilisation, quand ils existent. Nous proposons des contributions sur l'une des étapes principales dans cette construction, qui consiste à extraire et à organiser un modèle de caractéristiques (feature model) dans un mode automatisé. La première contribution consiste à extraire des caractéristiques dans le code source de variantes de logiciels écrits dans le paradigme objet. Trois techniques sont mises en œuvre pour parvenir à cet objectif : l'Analyse Formelle de Concepts, l'Indexation Sémantique Latente et l'analyse des dépendances structurelles dans le code. Elles exploitent les parties communes et variables au niveau du code source. La seconde contribution s'attache à documenter une caractéristique extraite par un nom et une description. Elle exploite le code source mais également les diagrammes de cas d'utilisation, qui contiennent, en plus de l'organisation logique des fonctionnalités externes, des descriptions textuelles de ces mêmes fonctionnalités. En plus des techniques précédentes, elle s'appuie sur l'Analyse Relationnelle de Concepts afin de former des groupes d'entités d'après leurs relations. Dans la troisième contribution, nous proposons une approche visant à organiser les caractéristiques, une fois documentées, dans un modèle de caractéristiques. Ce modèle de caractéristiques est un arbre étiqueté par des opérations et muni d'expressions logiques qui met en valeur les caractéristiques obligatoires, les caractéristiques optionnelles, des groupes de caractéristiques (groupes ET, OU, OU exclusif), et des contraintes complémentaires textuelles sous forme d'implication ou d'exclusion mutuelle. Ce modèle est obtenu par analyse d'une structure obtenue par Analyse Formelle de Concepts appliquée à la description des variantes par les caractéristiques. L'approche est validée sur trois cas d'étude principaux : ArgoUML-SPL, Health complaint-SPL et Mobile media. Ces cas d'études sont déjà des lignes de produits constituées. Nous considérons plusieurs produits issus de ces lignes comme s'ils étaient des variantes de logiciels, nous appliquons notre approche, puis nous évaluons son efficacité par comparaison entre les modèles de caractéristiques extraits automatiquement et les modèles de caractéristiques initiaux (conçus par les développeurs des lignes de produits analysées). / The idea of Software Product Line (SPL) approach is to manage a family of similar software products in a reuse-based way. Reuse avoids repetitions, which helps reduce development/maintenance effort, shorten time-to-market and improve overall quality of software. To migrate from existing software product variants into SPL, one has to understand how they are similar and how they differ one from another. Companies often develop a set of software variants that share some features and differ in other ones to meet specific requirements. To exploit existing software variants and build a software product line, a feature model must be built as a first step. To do so, it is necessary to extract mandatory and optional features in addition to associate each feature with its name. Then, it is important to organize the mined and documented features into a feature model. In this context, our thesis proposes three contributions.Thus, we propose, in this dissertation as a first contribution a new approach to mine features from the object-oriented source code of a set of software variants based on Formal Concept Analysis, code dependency and Latent Semantic Indexing. The novelty of our approach is that it exploits commonality and variability across software variants, at source code level, to run Information Retrieval methods in an efficient way. The second contribution consists in documenting the mined feature implementations based on Formal Concept Analysis, Latent Semantic Indexing and Relational Concept Analysis. We propose a complementary approach, which aims to document the mined feature implementations by giving names and descriptions, based on the feature implementations and use-case diagrams of software variants. The novelty of our approach is that it exploits commonality and variability across software variants, at feature implementations and use-cases levels, to run Information Retrieval methods in an efficient way. In the third contribution, we propose an automatic approach to organize the mined documented features into a feature model. Features are organized in a tree which highlights mandatory features, optional features and feature groups (and, or, xor groups). The feature model is completed with requirement and mutual exclusion constraints. We rely on Formal Concept Analysis and software configurations to mine a unique and consistent feature model. To validate our approach, we applied it on three case studies: ArgoUML-SPL, Health complaint-SPL, Mobile media software product variants. The results of this evaluation validate the relevance and the performance of our proposal as most of the features and its constraints were correctly identified.

<p>software product line is a set of software-intensive systems that share a common, managed set of features satisfying the specificneeds of a particular market segment or mission. The main attractive part of SPL is developing a set of common assets which includes requirements, design, test plans, test cases, reusable software components and other artifacts. Tools for the development of softwareproduct line are very few in number. The purpose of these tools is to support the creation, maintenance and using different versions ofproduct line artifacts. This requires a development environment that supports the management of assets and product development,processes and sharing of assets among different products.</p><p>The objective of this master thesis is to investigate the available tools which support Software Product Line process and itsdevelopment phases. The work is carried out in two steps, in the first step available Software Product Line tools are explored and a list of tools is prepared, managed and a brief introduction of each tool is presented. The tools are classified into different categoriesaccording to their usage, relation between the tools is established for better organization and understanding. In the second step, two tools Pure::variant and MetaEdit+ are selected and the quality factors such as Usability, Performance, Reliability, MemoryConsumption and Capacity are evaluated.</p>

A software product line is a set of software-intensive systems that share a common, managed set of features satisfying the specificneeds of a particular market segment or mission. The main attractive part of SPL is developing a set of common assets which includes requirements, design, test plans, test cases, reusable software components and other artifacts. Tools for the development of softwareproduct line are very few in number. The purpose of these tools is to support the creation, maintenance and using different versions ofproduct line artifacts. This requires a development environment that supports the management of assets and product development,processes and sharing of assets among different products. The objective of this master thesis is to investigate the available tools which support Software Product Line process and itsdevelopment phases. The work is carried out in two steps, in the first step available Software Product Line tools are explored and a list of tools is prepared, managed and a brief introduction of each tool is presented. The tools are classified into different categoriesaccording to their usage, relation between the tools is established for better organization and understanding. In the second step, two tools Pure::variant and MetaEdit+ are selected and the quality factors such as Usability, Performance, Reliability, MemoryConsumption and Capacity are evaluated.

Made available in DSpace on 2014-06-12T15:53:51Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 arquivo1933_1.pdf: 2116074 bytes, checksum: 1144c9fce7906fba6fc1437ad2a4c27b (MD5) license.txt: 1748 bytes, checksum: 8a4605be74aa9ea9d79846c1fba20a33 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2009 / Reuso de software é um aspecto chave para organizações interessadas em obter melhorias de produtividade, qualidade e redução de custos. Linhas de Produto de Software é uma abordagem de reúso de software que provou seus benefícios em diferentes contextos industriais (Weiss et al., 2006). Em termos de evolução, uma linha de produtos é um conjunto em contínua evolução, e por isso, sua evolução precisa ser gerenciada para que se alcance os benefícios dessa abordagem. O fato de um core asset ser compartilhado entre produtos, e todas as mudanças neste core asset poder ter efeito sobre diversos produtos (McGregor, 2003), aliado ao fato que em linhas de produto de software é preciso lidar com evolução no tempo (versões) e também evolução no espaço (variabilidade) (Krueger, 2002), faz com que o gerenciamento da evolução (mudanças) em linhas de produto de software seja mais complexo e mais desafiador do que o desenvolvimento tradicional de sistemas únicos (Pussinen, 2002). Portanto, a evolução dos core assets e também dos produtos precisa ser bem gerenciada para minimizar os problemas causados por ela. Este desafio envolve diferentes soluções, como questões técnicas, gerenciais e processuais. Desta forma, o foco desta dissertação está nos problemas ligados ao processo de gerenciamento evolução em linhas de produto de software. Neste contexto, este trabalho apresenta o RiPLE-EM, que é um processo para gerenciamento da evolução. Este processo é uma forma sistemática de guiar e gerenciar a evolução de cada core asset e cada produto, englobando atividades de gerenciamento de mudanças, builds, e entregas. Esta dissertação também apresenta a validação inicial do RiPLE-EM, seguindo guias bem estabelecidos de experimentação de software (Wohlin et al., 2000), e de acordo com os dados coletados e analisados na experimentação, RiPLE-EM mostra indicações de que seja um processo viável para o gerenciamento da evolução em linhas de produto de software

Business success in software industry is about deploying a product to the right market, with the right features, in the right time with a good quality. Many development projects exceed the budget, is not completed within schedule or do not reach business objectives. One key role managing the business of the product is the software product manager. The software product manager role is though seldom clearly described, competence needed is not always clear and education to become a product manager is today only offered by separate courses provided by some few private initiatives. This thesis uses a qualitative descriptive approach, the purpose with this thesis is to produce further knowledge around the software product manager role. The clarification and structure of the software product manager role is limited in academia; therefore, this research will be combined with an exploratory approach to be able to verify the empirical findings. The thesis also includes observations and data collection from actual job applications to further define the requested competences of a software product manager. This thesis has found that domain competence is the top most important competence for a software product manager. To be able to make success in the role communication skills and analytic skills are most important. The right soft skills are as important as the educated competences. The thesis conclude that the product manager role is wide and it is important to be surrounded with colleagues that support the role were there are lacking of competence in technology, business or market expertise. A successful product manager build network among people, cross-functional teams, around the product and establish an effective way to communicate with those groups. Findings suggest that software companies define the responsibilities and expectations of the product manager role. As important is to support the product manager with the input data needed to be able to perform the product manager activities. By defining the responsibilities and securing the input data needed, the product manager will have a higher probability to produce a result with an impact.

Context. Software Product Management (SPM) is an activity done by software product managers to develop products from the very first idea till the product is release to the market and providing service to customers. SPM helps software product managers to successfully maintain their product throughout product lifecycle till it is disposed of from the market. In this thesis we have studied about SPM both from the state of knowledge and state of practice to understand the different activities being followed by software product managers and concepts in those activities. Objectives. The study identifies the practices followed in SPM, both from the literature and industrial practitioners. The study also unravels the order in which they implement SPM activities. We have focused on what activities need to be focused by junior software product manager when implementing SPM and based on the inputs from software practitioners a preliminary framework was designed. Methods. Literature review was conducted to identify what are the different practices in SPM. To cover the literature related to SPM different international databases like Compendex, Inspec, IEEE Xplore, ACM Digital Library, Wiley Inter Science, Scopus, Science Direct, and Business Source Premier are selected. Articles from databases are selected between the years 1995-2011. Text books related to SPM, conference proceedings and grey literature are also used. Interviews and Survey are conducted with practitioners to identify how SPM is being implemented in organizations. We have also focused on what activities need to be implemented in SPM by junior software product managers after they take up their job. Results. Totally 133 different practices are identified related to SPM and are grouped in to their respective activities. Based on the findings a preliminary framework was designed for junior software product managers where they need to implement 22 concepts and these concepts are grouped into their respective activities which are Requirements Management, Release Planning, Product Planning, Product Roadmapping and Marketing. Conclusions. We conclude that the SPM frameworks identified through literature relate to each other and use similar activities. We also conclude that the frameworks identified from literature cover almost all of the activities implemented by software product managers during SPM when empirical research was conducted. The frameworks identified from literature don’t give a clear picture about what activities need to be focused by junior software product managers when implementing SPM. To overcome this, a preliminary framework was designed for junior software product managers based on the empirical evidence identified from interviews and survey. Moreover we conclude that a curriculum needs to be designed for SPM which clearly teaches junior software product managers regarding the activities and concepts involved in SPM and focusing more on the activities which need to be implemented by junior software product managers.