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Flexible Product Line Engineering With a Virtual Platform

Michał AntkiewiczNIER Track, ICSE’14

June 5, 2014

http://gsd.uwaterloo.ca http://necsis.ca

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How novel is the idea presented in this work?

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“Virtual Platform” is …

an incremental and minimally invasive strategy for adoption of

product line engineering

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Organization

Project 1

Asset

Component Library

Framework

Project 2

Asset

Variant 1

6

Organization

Project 1

Asset

Component Library

Framework

Project 2

Asset

Variant 1

Variant 2

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Cloning Product-Line EngineeringOrganization

Project 1

Asset

Component Library

Framework

Project 2

Asset

Asset

Asset

Integrated Platform

Component Library

Framework

Project 1

ConfigAsset

Project 2

ConfigAsset

Variant 1

Variant 2

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Organization

Project 1

Asset

Component Library

Framework

Project 2

Asset

Asset

Asset

Integrated Platform

Component Library

Framework

Project 1

ConfigAsset

Project 2

ConfigAsset

Transition

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Organization

Project 1

Asset

Component Library

Framework

Project 2

Asset

Asset

Asset

Integrated Platform

Component Library

Framework

Project 1

ConfigAsset

Project 2

ConfigAsset

?+flexibility

+innovation

+independence

+low cost ofinitial reuse

+speed

+scale

+propagation

+lowredundancy

+new variants

+configurationover implementation

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“Make the distributed assets reusable instead of integrating them into a platform”

Key Idea 1

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“Offer incremental benefits for incremental efforts”

Key Idea 2

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Virtual Platform = 6 Governance Levels

For each level• Description• Advantages• Disadvantages• Tactics• (Example)• Recommendation

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Governance Levels

L0: Ad-Hoc Clone & OwnL1: Clone & Own with ProvenanceL2: Clone & Own with FeaturesL3: Clone & Own with ConfigurationL4: Clone & Own with a Feature Model

Freq

uenc

y of

Reu

se

Prep

arati

on E

ffort

L5: PLE with an Integrated Platform and Clone & Own

L6: PLE with a Fully Integrated Platform

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“Each level is ‘good’ given the specific needs”

Key Idea 3

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Organization

Project 1

Asset

Component Library

Framework

Project 2

Asset

Asset

Asset

Integrated Platform

Component Library

Framework

Project 1

ConfigAsset

Project 2

ConfigAsset

L0 L1 L2 L3 L4 L5 L6

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To what extent are the new results emerging?

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"Cloning Considered Harmful" Considered Harmful

Kapser and Godfrey, WCRE '06

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“Integrated Platform not Always Desirable”

Dubinsky et al., CSMR, 2013(Best Paper Award)

Stallinger et al., PLEASE, 2011

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Clone Management Framework

Rubin et al., SPLC’12, ICSE NIER’13, SPLC’13 (Best Paper Award)

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Spawned Research Activities

• University of Koblenz-Landau– Managing cloning in 101companies– Measure consequences of lack of the management

• University of Waterloo– Embedded feature annotations (FA)– Simulation study to measure cost/benefit of FAs– Virtual Platform Development Tool

• IT University of Copenhagen– Variability-aware Version Control

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What is the potential impact of this work?

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A roadmap for organizations

• Justifiable effort / expected benefits• Ability to scale up reuse

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A way to achieve some benefits of PLE by SMEs

• Feature-oriented development• Proactively or retroactively

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One consultant* applied the governance levels to characterize an organization

* Dessault Systemes

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Another consulting company confirmed the value, the need, and the applicability for its

clients

Where are the tools?!?

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Thank You!Questions?