Variability Intensive Systems

Variability is an evident property of several systems and describes the ability of a system to be changed or customized according to the specific needs of the system's stakeholders. Software product line engineering is a very prominent paradigm for the development of variability-intensive systems. Nevertheless, variability is not limited to product line engineering, it occurs in several types of systems, e.g. (self-)adaptable service-oriented systems, or even in the development of single systems in which you may have a test system and productive system.
The research group variability-intensive systems analyses on the specific challenges that arise from the explicit consideration of variability in software engineering and develop dedicated approaches that adress these challenges.

Research Topics

  • Analysis of variability-intensive systems
  • Management of variability
  • Tool support for the development of variability-intensive systems
  • Integration of variability management into software engineering processes
  • Specification of variability in requirements, design, implementation and test
  • Formal verification (e.g. model checking and static analysis) of variable specifications
  • Testing of variability-intensive systems
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Research Project

  • Integration and system testing of software product lines (IST-SPL)
  • Innovation Alliance Software Plattform Embedded Systems (SPES2020)
  • Consistency Checking of Product Line Models (KOPI)
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Collaboration

  • Industry: adesso AG, Alcatel-Lucent, Atos Origin, Barmenia Versicherungs-AG, Engineering Ingegneria Informatica S.p.A., HP labs, Logica GMC, Munich Public Services, Philipps, Robert Bosch GmbH, RWE AG, RWE Consulting, RWE Effizienz, SAP AG, Siemens AG, Siemens Corporate Research, Thales Group
  • Academia: Fraunhofer Gesellschaft, INRIA, IT University of Copenhagen, Lero, MoMa Italy, RWTH Aachen, Technische Universität München, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, University College Dublin, University of Namur, University of Seville
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Lectures

  • Software Engineering and Programming (SEP)
  • Software Product Line Engineering
  • Student Projects
  • Seminars, Bachelor and Master Thesis
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Team

  • Andre Heuer
  • Malte Kellner
  • Manuel Mallis
  • Richard Pohl
  • Vanessa Stricker (lead)
  • Florian Wessling
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Selected publications

  • Pohl, R.; Lauenroth, K.; Pohl, K.: A Performance Comparison of Contemporary Algorithmic Approaches for Automated Analysis Operations on Feature Models. In: Proceedings of the 26th Int'l Conference on Automated Software Engineering (ASE 2011). IEEE Press. 2011 (accepted for publication).
  • Heuer, A.; Budnik, C.J.; Konrad, S.; Lauenroth, K.; Pohl, K.: Formal Definition of Syntax and Semantics for Documenting Variability in Activity Diagrams. In: Proceedings of the 14th Intl. Software Product Line Conference 2010. Springer, 2010.
  • Heuer, A.; Lauenroth, K.; Müller, M.; Scheele, Jan-Nils: Towards an Effective Visual Modeling of Complex Software Product Lines. In: Proceedings of the 3rd Intl. Workshop on Visualisation in Software Product Line Engineering (ViSPLE 2010) in Proceedings of Software Product Line Conference 2010 (Volume 2). 2010.
  • Stricker, V.; Metzger, A.; Pohl, K.: Avoiding Redundant Testing in Application Engineering. In: Proceedings of the 14th Intl. Software Product Line Conference 2010. Springer, 2010.
  • Lauenroth, K.; Pohl, K.; Töhning, S.: Model Checking of Domain Artifacts in Product Line Engineering. In: Proc. of the ACM/IEEE Intl. Conference on Automated Software Engineering. IEEE Computer Society, November 2009, S. 269-280.
  • Lauenroth, K.; Pohl, K.: Dynamic Consistency Checking of Domain Requirements in Product Line Engineering. In: Tamai, T.; Franch, X. (Hrsg.) Proc. 16th IEEE Intl. Requirements Engineering Conf.. IEEE Computer Society, 2008, S. 193-202.
  • Halmans, G.: Ein Ansatz zur Unterstützung der Ableitung einer Applikationsanforderungsspezifikation mit Integration spezifischer Applikationsanforderungen. Logos-Verlag, Berlin 2007.
  • Pohl, K.; Böckle, G.; van der Linden, F.: Software Product Line Engineering – Foundations, Principles, and Techniques. Springer, Heidelberg 2005.