CASE Tool support for variability management in software product lines

Software product lines (SPL) aim at reducing time-to-market and increasing software quality through extensive, planned reuse
of artifacts. An essential activity in SPL is variability management, i.e., defining and managing commonality and variability
among member products. Due to the large scale and complexity of today’s software-intensive systems, variability management
has become increasingly complex to conduct. Accordingly, tool support for variability management has been gathering
increasing momentum over the last few years and can be considered a key success factor for developing and maintaining SPLs.
While several studies have already been conducted on variability management, none of these analyzed the available tool
support in detail. In this work, we report on a survey in which we analyzed 37 existing variability management tools identified
using a systematic literature review to understand the tools’ characteristics, maturity, and the challenges in the field. We
conclude that while most studies on variability management tools provide a good motivation and description of the research
context and challenges, they often lack empirical data to support their claims and findings. It was also found that quality
attributes important for the practical use of tools such as usability, integration, scalability, and performance were out of scope
for most studies.