Categorizing and modeling variation in families of systems

Simidchieva, Borislava I.; Osterweil, Leon J.

doi:10.1145/1842752.1842811

Cited by 6 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 21 publications

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“…There are a number of process definition languages that support hierarchical decomposition and also provide facilities for specifying activity sequencing as well as artifact flow. In previous work, we have discussed how some problem-level variation requirements are nicely addressed by solution-level variation approaches that exploit hierarchy by building upon a common core [29]. We have also described some suggested mappings [27] that make it easier to identify what solution-level techniques can meet different problemlevel needs.…”

Section: Approachmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We have previously described process families based on the need to achieve different levels of robustness [27,29], which we defined as variation in the extent to which different variants are able to recover from different kinds and different degrees of incorrect or abusive use. Although we do not discuss robustness variation in detail here, we note that robustness variation at the implementation level can often be effected by varying the exception management of a process, especially if that is possible to achieve without disturbing the nominal control flow of the process.…”

Section: Functional Detail Variationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We refer to requirements specifications that mandate these various kinds of variation in HISs as problem-level variation. In previous work we have identified several kinds of problem-level variation [29] and suggested how each might be addressed and implemented by different kinds of solution-level variation techniques [27]. We continue to study this dichotomy, but in this paper, we focus only on solution-level variation.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Generation, composition, and verification of families of human-intensive systems

Simidchieva

Osterweil

2014

Proceedings of the 18th International Software Product Line Conference - Volume 1

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Software products are rarely developed without providing different sets of features to better meet varying user needs, whether through tiered products as part of a product line or different subscription levels for software as a service (SaaS). Software product line approaches for generating and maintaining a family of different variants of software products address such needs for variation quite well. Real-world human-intensive systems (HISs) display similar needs for families of variants. A key contribution of this paper is to show how many of these needs can be rigorously and systematically addressed by adapting established techniques from system and software product line engineering (SPLE).In this paper, we present an approach for creating such families by explicitly modeling variation in HISs. We focus on two kinds of variation we have previously described in other work-functional detail variation and service variation. We describe a prototype system that is able to meet the need for these kinds of variation within an existing modeling framework and present a case study of the application of our prototype system to generate a family in an HIS from the domain of elections. Our approach also demonstrates how to perform model-checking of this family to discover whether any variants in the family may violate specified system requirements.

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Section: Approachmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Functional Detail Variationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Generation, composition, and verification of families of human-intensive systems

Simidchieva

Osterweil

2014

Proceedings of the 18th International Software Product Line Conference - Volume 1

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“…First of all, the article by Simidchieva et al [20] presents an explicit differentiation between problem and solution spaces, and identifies three types of approaches: generation, navigation and reasoning. Araujo et al [21] propose the management of process variability by identifying the common, mandatory, optative and alternative features of a process model.…”

Section: State Of the Artmentioning

confidence: 99%

Process variability management in global software development: a case study

Martínez-Ruiz

García

Piattini

et al. 2013

Proceedings of the 2013 International Conference on Software and System Process

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Global Software Development (GSD) is set to be the paradigm that will support software industries in the increasingly globalized 21st century. It opens the door to companies from emerging countries to compete for their own gap in the market. It does, however, still bring some challenges with it. It must integrate different cultures, work styles, and work timetables in the same development process. In fact, GSD methodologies do indeed include specific activities to coordinate different work teams, but they fail precisely where any other methodology does: in the need to be truly useful by meeting the distinct cultural requirements of every organization involved, all at the same time. Up to now, process tailoring has been managed through variability mechanisms. Since these successfully merge original structure with cultural assets, they are also useful for adjusting global methodologies so that they suit each particular development context. This paper presents a case study of the use of the VariantRich Process paradigm (VRP) to support tailoring in a GSD methodology. It reveals the suitability of the VRP mechanisms, given that they support the two tailoring dimensions a GSD project involves, i.e., they take into account the circumstances of the entire global project, as well as the need to fit the internal characteristics of each organization; furthermore, they save effort in the tailoring process.

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“…In earlier work [18], we suggested that there are different canonical approaches that are useful in meeting different kinds of requirements for variation, and we suggested that any such approach should facilitate: Generation-the creation of new family members, Navigation-the identification of family members that best satisfy a set of given needs, and Analysis-reasoning about an entire family to prove that all family members have desired properties. A particular approach to creating a family might facilitate only some of these desiderata.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Characterizing process variation (NIER track)

Simidchieva

Osterweil

2011

Proceedings of the 33rd International Conference on Software Engineering

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A process model, namely a formal definition of the coordination of agents performing activities using resources and artifacts, can aid understanding of the real-world process it models. Moreover, analysis of the model can suggest improvements to the real-world process. Complex real-world processes, however, exhibit considerable amounts of variation that can be difficult or impossible to represent with a single process model. Such processes can often be modeled better, within the restrictions of a given modeling notation, by a family of models. This paper presents an approach to the formal characterization of some of these process families. A variety of needs for process variation are identified, and suggestions are made about how to meet some of these needs using different approaches. Some mappings of different needs for variability to approaches for meeting them are presented as case studies.

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Categorizing and modeling variation in families of systems

Cited by 6 publications

References 21 publications

Generation, composition, and verification of families of human-intensive systems

Generation, composition, and verification of families of human-intensive systems

Process variability management in global software development: a case study

Characterizing process variation (NIER track)

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