Agile software product lines: a systematic mapping study

Abstract

Background: Software product lines and Agile methods have been an effective solution for dealing with the growing complexity of software and handling competitive needs of software organizations. They also share common goals, such as improving productivity, reducing time‐to‐market, decreasing development costs and increasing customer satisfaction. There has been growing interest in whether the integration of Agile and SPL could provide further benefits and solve many of the outstanding issues surrounding software development. Objective: This study investigates the state‐of‐the‐art in Agile SPL approaches, while identifying gaps in current research and synthesizing available evidence. It also provides a basis for a deeper understanding of the issues involved in the integration of Agile and SPL. Method: A mapping study was undertaken to analyze the relation between Agile and SPL methods. A set of four research questions were defined in which the 32 primary studies were evaluated. Results: This study provides insights into the integration of Agile and SPL approaches, it identifies the current gaps in the research, synthesize the available evidence and propose specific Agile methods and practices for integration in SPL. Conclusions: In general, few studies describe the underlying Agile principles being adopted by proposed Agile SPL solutions. The most common Agile practices proposed by the studies came from the XP and Scrum methods, particularly in the pro‐active SPL strategy. We identify certain Agile methods that are being overlooked by the Agile SPL community, and propose specific SPL practices areas suitable for adoption of Agile practices. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Software product line scoping and requirements engineering in a small and medium-sized enterprise: An industrial case study

“…We mitigated this risk through discussions with SPL experts, reviewing important papers in the topic, and the mapping study (Silva et al, 2011).…”

“…We grouped characterized bottlenecks and identified the weaknesses in a number of aspects that the literature mentions as success factors for agile software development (Silva et al, 2011). The success factors are: the effort (Dybå, 2000;Hazzan and Hadar, 2008;John and Eisenbarth, 2009), communication and collaboration (Dybå, 2000;Hazzan and Hadar, 2008;Pettersson et al, 2008;Stelzer and Mellis, 1999;Niazi et al, 2005), iteration and adaptation (Hazzan and Hadar, 2008;Pettersson et al, 2008), motivation (John and Eisenbarth, 2009), and requirements and technology volatility.…”

“…These factors were chosen, mainly, because of a systematic mapping study into SPL and agile methods (Silva et al, 2011). In this mapping study, the primary studies partially addressed each one of these factors.…”

RiSE-DA: An Agile Domain Analysis Process and its Industrial Evaluation

“…However, companies moving to agile principles and practices are looking for software reuse processes providing mechanisms to support faster changes in volatile business domains. In this context, process iterativeness, feedback among stakeholders, and process adaptability are essential [1].…”

“…The process description is based on the Software Process Engineering Metamodel (SPEM) 1 . The entire RiSE-DA specification (activities, tasks, steps, roles and work products) is available on the web 2 .…”