Rationale-based variability management in product line requirements engineering

Software Product Line approaches enable mass customization and reuse during the development of software intensive systems. Variability management is a key aspect of this approach. The rhetorical Questions, Options and Criteria (QOC) model can manage variability with justification. Thus, using QOC in the conventional variability management techniques of product line requirements engineering enhances the current state of variability management with reasoning and justification, which paves the way for a new concept called Rationale-based Variability Management in Requirements Engineering (RVMRE). In RVMRE, QOC is used in association with an existing variability representation techniques to address variability constraints and product instantiation in product line requirements engineering. Examples from a microwave oven product line are used for the case study and evaluation of the concepts are discussed in this paper.