Viewpoint-Oriented Variability Modeling

Software product lines have emerged as the main method achieving reuse. Traditionally, a product line has a single feature model shared by all the products. For large and evolving product lines with numerous stakeholders, the feature model becomes increasingly complex and hard to manage. Having just one large feature model with all allowed variability makes understanding the reasons for variability very difficult. This may lead to reluctance of changing feature variability and removing unnecessary variability rules from the model. In this paper, we propose a method to use viewpoints for capturing the needs of all stakeholders without resorting to a one large feature model. Different viewpoints can be combined to gain insight to the product line and to derive products. The method supports current industrial practices.