Ivonei Freitas da Silva

Agile software product lines: a systematic mapping study

Background: Software product lines and Agile methods have been an effective solution for dealing with the growing complexity of software and handling competitive needs of software organizations. They also share common goals, such as improving productivity, reducing time‐to‐market, decreasing development costs and increasing customer satisfaction. There has been growing interest in whether the integration of Agile and SPL could provide further benefits and solve many of the outstanding issues surrounding software development. Objective: This study investigates the state‐of‐the‐art in Agile SPL approaches, while identifying gaps in current research and synthesizing available evidence. It also provides a basis for a deeper understanding of the issues involved in the integration of Agile and SPL. Method: A mapping study was undertaken to analyze the relation between Agile and SPL methods. A set of four research questions were defined in which the 32 primary studies were evaluated. Results: This study provides insights into the integration of Agile and SPL approaches, it identifies the current gaps in the research, synthesize the available evidence and propose specific Agile methods and practices for integration in SPL. Conclusions: In general, few studies describe the underlying Agile principles being adopted by proposed Agile SPL solutions. The most common Agile practices proposed by the studies came from the XP and Scrum methods, particularly in the pro‐active SPL strategy. We identify certain Agile methods that are being overlooked by the Agile SPL community, and propose specific SPL practices areas suitable for adoption of Agile practices. Copyright

Software product line scoping and requirements engineering in a small and medium-sized enterprise: An industrial case study

HighlightsWe described a detailed qualitative study on software product line scoping and requirements engineering.We examine weaknesses regarding the iterativeness, adaptability, and communication.Agile methods can mitigate the iterativeness, adaptability, and communication weaknesses. Software product line (SPL) engineering has been applied in several domains, especially in large-scale software development. Given the benefits experienced and reported, SPL engineering has increasingly garnered interest from small to medium-sized companies. It is possible to find a wide range of studies reporting on the challenges of running a SPL project in large companies. However, very little reports exist that consider the situation for small to medium-sized enterprises and these studies try develop universal truths for SPL without lessons learned from empirical evidence need to be contextualized. This study is a step towards bridging this gap in contextual evidence by characterizing the weaknesses discovered in the scoping (SC) and requirements (RE) disciplines of SPL. Moreover, in this study we conducted a case study in a small to medium sized enterprises (SMEs) to justify the use of agile methods when introducing the SPL SC and RE disciplines through the characterization of their bottlenecks. The results of the characterization indicated that ineffective communication and collaboration, long iteration cycles, and the absence of adaptability and flexibility can increase the effort and reduce motivation during project development. These issues can be mitigated by agile methods.

An agile approach for software product lines scoping

Agile principles and practices have been applied in some Software Product Lines (SPL) activities such as scoping, requirements, tests, and architecture to address benefits from both paradigms. Agile principles and practices can be appropriate to scenarios with frequent changes decreasing effort, improving the communication and collaboration among the stakeholders, and adapting easier to volatilities of technology, domain, or requirements when performing the SPL activities. This paper describes an initial approach for SPL scoping combined with Agile principles and practices.

Using a multi-method approach to understand Agile software product lines

Abstract Context Software product lines (SPLs) and Agile are approaches that share similar objectives. The main difference is the way in which these objectives are met. Typically evidence on what activities of Agile and SPL can be combined and how they can be integrated stems from different research methods performed separately. The generalizability of this evidence is low, as the research topic is still relatively new and previous studies have been conducted using only one research method. Objective This study aims to increase understanding of Agile SPL and improve the generalizability of the identified evidence through the use of a multi-method approach. Method Our multi-method research combines three complementary methods (Mapping Study, Case Study and Expert Opinion) to consolidate the evidence. Results This combination results in 23 findings that provide evidence on how Agile and SPL could be combined. Conclusion Although multi-method research is time consuming and requires a high degree of effort to plan, design, and perform, it helps to increase the understanding on Agile SPL and leads to more generalizable evidence. The findings confirm a synergy between Agile and SPL and serve to improve the body of evidence in Agile SPL. When researchers and practitioners develop new Agile SPL approaches, it will be important to consider these synergies.