A Variability Viewpoint for Enterprise Software Systems

Many of today´s enterprise software systems are subject to variability. For example, enterprise software systems often run in different business units of an organization, with each unit having its own detailed requirements. Systematic handling of variability allows a software system to be adjusted for different contexts, by planning for adaptation during architecture design. As variability is system-wide, it is reflected in the software architecture. To facilitate the representation and analysis of variability in the architecture of enterprise software systems, we propose an architecture viewpoint. To define a reusable variability viewpoint, we elicited stakeholders and concerns through exploratory studies. We also show how the viewpoint was applied for describing variability in a large-scale e-government system.