Integrating Variability Management and Software Architecture

Effective variability support has become an important attribute of modern software development practices. Organizations show an increasing interest in the development of software applications using software platforms, reusable components, and mass customization. Even though many variability management tools exist, an approach that integrates support for variability management (e.g. features, decisions, variation points, and variants) directly into architecture models is still missing. Making variability concepts an integral part of architecture models has many benefits. Variability management and architecture development can be integrated into one consistent information model and development environment supporting full traceability of architectural artifacts (e.g. requirements, features, components) on all levels of the development lifecycle. In this paper we show how we integrated orthogonal variability modeling and feature modeling into LISA, an approach and toolkit for architecture management and analysis. Variability management is no longer a separate activity but an integral part of the architecture development lifecycle.