Supporting Variability Management in Architecture Design and Implementation

Variability management and architecture design and implementation are mostly separate activities. Existing variability management approaches focus on documenting the variable properties of a product line and on deriving products as members of the product line. Their support for architecture modeling is limited to capabilities needed for product derivation. Existing architecture design and implementation tools, on the other hand, support different architectural and implementation views on a software system but lack support for variability tracing and modeling during development and design. To close this gap, we present an approach for integrated variability management during software architecture design and implementation. The approach is an extension of LISA, a model and toolkit for architecture management and analysis. Variability modeling is provided by an additional view on a single consistent architecture model leading to a tight integration of variability and architecture modeling and implementation. Architects and developers are thus constantly aware of the variants they are working on and their implications on architecture design and implementation.