Violatility analysis framework for product lines

Abstract

Evolution of a software intensive system is unavoidable. In fact, evolution can be seen as a part of reuse process. During the evolution of the software asset, the major part of the system functionality is normally reused. So the key issue is to identify the volatile parts of the domain requirements. Additionally, there is promise that tailored tool support may help supporting evolution in software intensive systems. In this paper, we describe the volatility analysis method for product lines. This highly practical method has been used in multiple domains and is able to express and estimate common types of evolutional characteristics. The method is able to represent volatility in multiple levels and has capacity to tie the volatility estimation to one product line member specification. We also briefly describe current tool support for the method. The main contribution of this paper is a volatility analysis framework that can be used to describe how requirements are estimated to evolve in the future. The method is based on the definition hierarchy framework.