Evaluation of quality attribute variability in software product families

Software product family or line is a software engineering paradigm that systematizes reuse. In Software Product Line Engineering, two phases are distinguished: Domain Engineering which is in charge of developing a common infrastructure and assets and Application Engineering which makes use of those assets to generate the products. One of the key aspects of product lines is variability and its management. However, the main focus has been on functional variability and quality variability in software product lines has not received so much attention by researchers. In a product line different members of the line may require different levels of a quality requirement, for instance they could differ in terms of their availability, security, reliability, etc. Due to this variability, quality evaluation in software product lines is much more complicated that in single-systems. One alternative is to evaluate all the products of a line but it is very expensive and ways of reducing evaluation efforts are necessary. In this direction, the paper presents a method for facilitating cost-effective quality evaluation of a product line taking into consideration variability on quality attributes.