Decision support for evolving a single software product to a software product line
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2011
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Abstract
Offering the right set of features to the targeted customers is a key factor in the success of market-driven software products. While planning for the next release of a single evolving software system, this thesis research addresses the decision problem: Should it be offered as a single product or a product line? Most existing approaches address this problem by focusing on either the business aspects or the technical aspects in isolation of each other. A flexible decision support framework (Contribution 1) which can be customized at different levels of sophistication is presented to address the decision problem. Three instantiations of the framework are presented as a family of decision support methods (Contribution 2). Each method tackles the decision problem with increasing level of sophistication by applying customized algorithms and techniques (Contribution 3). The first method (COPE) applies cluster analysis to identify segments of customers and proposes corresponding product portfolios. A human decision maker is involved to select a solution by informally considering architectural and economic benefits. The second method (COPE+) evaluates the impact of new features on evolving software systems' architectural structure by applying an evolutionary algorithm and a customized graph matching algorithm. This analysis reduces the solutions space and helps the decision maker to select a suitable solution. The third method (OPTESS) formally brings in the economic aspect by allowing the decision maker to perform trade-off analysis between the technical and business objectives. Three illustrative case studies are presented as proof of concepts of the proposed methods (Contribution 4). A decision support tool is provided to help the decision maker in application of the methods by automating some of the activities of these methods (Contribution 5).
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Bibliography: p. 146-153
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Citation
Ullah, M. I. (2011). Decision support for evolving a single software product to a software product line (Doctoral thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca. doi:10.11575/PRISM/4476