Software Product Line (SPL) engineering aims at achieving efficient development
of software products in a specific domain. New products are obtained via a process
which entails creating a new configuration specifying the desired product’s features. This configuration must necessarily conform to a variability model, that describes the scope of the SPL, or else it is not viable. To ensure this, configuration tools are used that do not allow invalid configurations to be expressed.
A different concern, however, is making sure that a product addresses the stakeholders’ needs as best as possible. The stakeholders may not be experts on
the domain, so they may have unrealistic expectations. Also, the scope of the SPL
is determined not only by the domain but also by limitations of the development
platforms. It is therefore possible that the desired set of features goes beyond
what is possible to currently create with the SPL. This means that configuration
tools should provide support not only for creating valid products, but also for
improving satisfaction of user concerns.
We address this goal by providing a user-centric configuration process that offers suggestions during the configuration process, based on the use of soft constraints, and identifying and explaining potential conflicts that may arise. Suggestions help mitigating stakeholder uncertainty and poor domain knowledge, by helping them address well known and desirable domain-related concerns. On the other hand, automated conflict identification and explanation helps the stakeholders to understand the trade-offs required for realizing their vision, allowing informed resolution of conflicts.
Additionally, we propose a prototype-based approach to configuration, that addresses the order-dependency issues by allowing the complete (or partial) specification of the features in a single step. A subsequent resolution process will then identify possible repairs, or trade-offs, that may be required for viabilization
