Efficient quality assurance of variability-intensive systems

Variability is becoming an increasingly important concern in software development but techniques to cost-effectively verify and validate software in the presence of variability have yet to become widespread. This half-day tutorial offers an overview of the state of the art in an emerging discipline at the crossroads of formal methods and software engineering: quality assurance of variability-intensive systems. We will present the most significant results obtained during the last four years or so, ranging from conceptual foundations to readily usable tools. Among the various quality assurance techniques, we focus on model checking, but also extend the discussion to other techniques. With its lightweight usage of mathematics and balance between theory and practice, this tutorial is designed to be accessible to a broad audience. Researchers working in the area, willing to join it, or simply curious, will get a comprehensive picture of the recent developments. Practitioners developing variability-intensive systems are invited to discover the capabilities of our techniques and tools, and to consider integrating them in their processes.