Research And Application On Method For Scoping Based On Features In Software Product Lines

Software product line is a set of software-intensive systems which is sharing a common and manageable set of features that these features can satisfy the special needs of specific markets or tasks and can be developed from a common set of core assets according to a specific way.Software product line approach epitomizes the kind of field-specific,large-grained software reuse practices,and its main purpose is through using commonality and predicting the variability to design the product family,and extends reuse development of similar products at low cost access to high-quality products.Therefore,the extraction of product commonality and the development general assets to realize these commonalities is the key point of high reusability.The first step of extracting commonality of product line scoping is to determine the scope of commonality and variability of the product line,which define and determine which products and features that belong to the product line,while helping policymakers ultimately decide whether it is worthwhile to establish product line.Product line scoping is a complex and critical activity because defining the scope of activities can capture the common area of different products under optimized conditions,and maximize economic benefits.In the past few decades,a series of software product line scoping methods and technologies used to produce the main application areas are divided into application domain-focused view and product-centric view,but application domain-focused view easily capture some additional elements,resulting in the product line scope is too large,and product-centric view is difficult to effectively complete scoping activities in practice.This paper presents a method for scoping based on features in software product lines according to the three levels of scoping proposed by J.Bosch combined with product-centric view and FODA,and establish the process model.This model includes the product features scope,domain scope and assets scope three sub-processes.In the product features scope,product features is the center.We need to collect market information for market analysis,define market criteria,select candidate products according to competitive analysis of products,and get the product features range.In the domain scope process,it divide into functional areas and sub areas and decompose refined feature set,identifies common features and individual features.Assets scope process concretizes enterprise goals into the evaluation index system,on the basis of data collected on existing assets,quantify stakeholder business objectives,assesses the cost-benefit assessment of the regional features assets,so as to determine the scope of the assets.Finally,take Door Lock system as an example to describe the overall process of comprehensive scoping,completely express the three levels of scoping.Especially,introducing market science perspective for product candidate selection process to establish a market definition criterion,thus quickly and actually determine the scope of the domain and assess the assets,simplify the processes of domain scope and assets scope,which can solve the incompleteness,confusion and low-efficiency of traditional methods.