Title: Glencoe – a tool and a methodology to manage variability within the product development process

Authors: Christian Bettinger; Georg Rock; Anna Schmitt

Addresses: Department of Computer Science, Schneidershof, 54293 Trier, Germany ' Department of Computer Science, Schneidershof, 54293 Trier, Germany ' Department of Computer Science, Schneidershof, 54293 Trier, Germany

Abstract: Manufacturers of all business areas are faced with growing customer demands and the corresponding complexity of their products. The need to offer highly customised variants becomes obvious especially in the automotive industry. New car models and respective variants with configurable features are offered to customers in increasingly shorter intervals. However, the production costs are expected to remain stable. A known industry approved approach to systematically design customisable products at reasonable costs are multivariant product lines: product line engineers compose models describing common and distinctive product features as well as their dependencies. Subsequently these models constitute the basis for formal analyses and optimisations of the corresponding product lines. In this paper we address typical problems in this area and how the presented methodology handles these problems. The free to use web application Glencoe implements main parts of this methodology. It is shown how Glencoe can be employed in industrial practice.

Keywords: variability management; development process; feature model; product line; visualisation; formal analysis.

DOI: 10.1504/IJASM.2019.104589

International Journal of Agile Systems and Management, 2019 Vol.12 No.4, pp.332 - 353

Received: 24 Oct 2018
Accepted: 11 Jun 2019
Published online: 21 Jan 2020 *

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