Evolution support mechanisms for software product line process

Abstract

Software product family process evolution needs specific support for incremental change. Product line process evolution involves in addition to identifying new requirements the building of a meta-process describing the migration from the old process to the new one. This paper presents basic mechanisms to support software product line process evolution. These mechanisms share four strategies - change identification, change impact, change propagation, and change validation. It also examines three kinds of evolution processes - architecture, product line, and product. In addition, change management mechanisms are identified. Specifically we propose support mechanisms for static local entity evolution and complex entity evolution including transient evolution process. An evolution model prototype based on dependency relationships structure of the various product line artifacts is developed. © 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.