Variability Realization in Model-based System Engineering using Software Product Line Techniques: An Industrial Perspective

Efficiently handling system variants is rising of importance in industry and challenges the application of model-based systems engineering. This paper reveals the increasing industrial demand of guidance and decision support on how to handle variants and variability within SysML and UML models. While a substantial amount of variability realization approaches has already been published on source code level, there is little guidance for practitioners on system model level. Hence, there is major uncertainty in dealing with system changes or concurrent system modeling of related system. Due to a poor modularization and variability realization these model variants are ending up in interwoven and complex system models. In this paper, we aim to raise awareness of the need for appropriate guidance and decision support, identify important contextual factors of MBSE that influence variability realization, and derive well known variability mechanisms used in software coding for their applicability in system modeling.