Software product line engineering (SPLE) has shown to be a very successful paradigm for developing a diversity of similar software products at low cost, in short time, and with high quality.

Product Line Engineering (PLE) has become a major topic in industrial software development and many organizations have started to consider PLE as state-of-practice. In PLE we aim to exploit the commonalities and variabilities of a product line for a more efficient way of developing and maintaining the product-line members. Systematic exploitation usually results in a product line (PL) infrastructure containing variation points that support the family members’ variabilities.

During recent years, the amount of variability that has to be supported by a software artifact is growing considerably and its management is developing as a main challenge during development, usage, and evolution of software artifacts. Successful management of variability in software artifacts leads to better customizable software products that are in turn likely to result in higher market success. The aim of this workshop is to study software variability management both from a 'problems' and from a 'solutions' perspective by bringing together people from industrial practice and from applied research in academia to present and discuss their respective experience. Issues to be addressed include, but are not limited to, technological, process, and organizational aspects as well as notation, assessment, design, and evolution aspects.

No abstract available.

S.753-754 : Ill.

No abstract available.

Describes, using the Quality Improvement Paradigm (QIP), how an improvement project aimed at improving the modeling and documentation approach of a medium-sized company (Markant Su/spl uml/dwest Software und Dienstleistungs GmbH) was conducted. We discuss the new modeling approach, which may serve for other companies as a template for deriving their own adapted approach. Further, we illustrate our insights from this project that can help in future technology transfer projects. A major characteristic of this project was that it was embedded in a long-term consulting relationship.

Software product lines are one of the most promising fields in software engineering. They aim at the synergistic construction of software products. A successful introduction of software product lines requires three essential ingredients: a business analysis of the overall advantages that can come from product lines, the definition of a systematic process for product lines development, and the definition of general models, in a standard format, which can guide the development process.