Modelling quality attributes in feature models in software product line engineering

In software product line engineering, product configuration is the process of selecting the desired features from a feature model based on customers' functional requirements. The quality attribute assessments for a configured product are neglected in most existing product configuration approaches. As we know, the key issue of assessing quality attributes for a configured product is to measure the interdependencies between functional features and quality attributes. To address this issue, we have proposed a quantitative-based approach to establish the interdependencies based on analytic hierarchical process (AHP) in our previous work. In this paper, we supplement our previous work from two aspects: first, we adapt non-functional requirement (NFR) framework to identify quality attributes for a software product line and extend current feature models to represent the identified quality attributes; second, we develop an evaluation method to check the consistency of domain experts' judgments to ensure the effectiveness of our approach. A simplified tourist guide software product line is used as an example to illustrate our approach