A nonfunctional requirement tradeoff analysis approach for software product line architecture design

Software product line development paradigm allows the development of intensive products simultaneously. Nonfunctional requirement analysis for the paradigm is a challenge problem, mainly due to the massive products that are involved. Especially in the situation where some products' nonfunctional requirements are not met, how do architects keep the revision, and the impact caused by the revision both minimal? This paper investigates the issue of nonfunctional requirement tradeoff analysis for software product lines at the architecture design stage, and proposes an architectural approach to assist architects in making optimal revision decisions based on nonfunctional tradeoff analysis results. In particular, the nonfunctional requirement supported in the approach at this stage is performance. The little's law has been adopted to support performance analysis for software product line architecture design. A Unified Modeling Language profile is also developed to support performance modeling for software product line architecture design, thus to facilitate architectural performance analysis.