Criteria for Comparing Requirements Variability Modeling Notations for Product Lines

Abstract

Software product families have proven to be an effective approach to reuse in software development. For planning requirements reuse, several variability approaches are developed. This study is made in an industrial company producing blood analysis automatons. It aims at finding the most suitable notation to model requirements variability for the product line developed by the company. The paper provides a comparative survey on feature-based notations for requirements variability modeling. It introduces an evaluation framework based on criteria that are derived by studying the main engineers' expectations for such a notation. The evaluation is fulfilled by making out notations' metamodels. The use of these languages is systematically illustrated with the same example, adapted from the company context, in order to refine the notation selection approach. Finally, recommendations are done, and issues on making the approach systematic are discussed.