METHOD ENGINEERING A Dissection of Dynamic Decision Models for Staged Software Product Line Configuration Ahmad Rifai (4239474)

Introduction Original Paper : Dynamic Decision Models for Staged Software Product Line Configuration (Bagheri & Ensan, 2014) What is Software Product Line (SPL): Set of software-intensive systems that share a common, managed set of features satisfying the specific needs of a particular market segment or mission and that are developed from a common set of core assets in a prescribed way. (For example : Call of Duty, The Sims, Windows, etc.)

Goals Help stakeholders to understand the connectivity and relationship between features in a product line Help stakeholders to easily make decisions by showing the use of each feature Assist stakeholders through product configuration process by using dynamic decision model with looking the structural characteristic of the model

Techniques Feature Model Belief theory: Extension to the traditional probability theory where probabilities are assigned to sets. This theory become a basis technique in a gamble query step in the dynamic decision modeling where stakeholders must compared two competing features.

Method Identify possible decision points in the decision path. Decision point means the variability in the product line that stakeholders need to choose. Calculate decision point based on expected utility. Rank the decision point in descending order, higher expected utility will become candidates to be handled at an earlier stage and most likely will give more useful information for the stakeholders.

Method (cont.) In this gamble query step, stakeholders must choose one decision point from two offered decision points, they also can ignore the current offer and move to next decision point offer. Update the utility of related features in the feature model based on step 4. Update stakeholders with feedback consist of updated utility information based on step 5. In the final step, stakeholders will have choice to review the utility information of the available features and decide whether they want to add more features or not in the final product.

PDD

Concept Concept Description DECISION POINT Points of variability in the product line where the stakeholders would need to select from amongst the available alternatives, besides the explicit variability points, other features that have some form of interaction with variable features could also be considered as parts of a decision point (Bagheri & Ensan, 2014). EXPECTED UTILITY The amount of changed belief mass that is assigned to the belief or disbelief dimensions of the utility of the features afected by the result of the gamble through the utility update process that will be undertaken by the utility propagation mechanisms (Bagheri & Ensan, 2014). RANK Arrangement in rows. FEATURE Important distinguishing aspects, qualities, or characteristics of a family of systems (Kang, Cohen, Hess, Novak, & Peterson, 1990). RELEASE Version of software product that ready to be delivered or provided to customer. SOFTWARE PRODUCT Merchandise consisting of a computer program that is offered for sale.

Example Tools : Eclips wih FeatureIDE plugins

Decision Point (Feature Name) Example No Decision Point (Feature Name) Expected Utility Rank 1 Item Showcase - Give a nice picture of each item in the shop - Item name is sorted by aplhabetic - Item price is dynamically linked to price database 50 2 Payment System - Able to securely communicate to external payment system - Support debit card/direct transfer - Support credit card 49 3 Web Themes - Dynamically change web themes to customer profile - Has female themes with feminine collors - Has male themes with masculine collors - Has children themes with cartoon background 40 4   … n

Changes during iteration