Building a requirements engineering methodology for software product lines

Software product lines are a great way to achieve reusability when they are correctly implemented. Theories about the product line paradigm already exist for multiple decades, but empirical research and reports of real life success stories are still scarce. Companies often still struggle to implement a software product line, because they don’t possess the necessary knowledge and therefore do not sufficiently focus on the most basic aspect of a product line, namely the variability. Variability is the key to systematic and successful reuse, and should be considered as soon as possible in any software engineering project. The goal of the research is to develop a methodology for dealing explicitly with variability in software product lines during requirements engineering, because its impact will be maximal during this phase of software engineering. The methodology will be developed based on case-study research, in order to ensure practical relevance.status: publishe