System family architecture description using the UML

At IESE, we developed a method for system family architecture description using the UML that is characterized by its focus on simplicity, automation possibilities, and completeness. First, the representation and other modeling concepts are fully UML compliant. This supports simplicity and allows for the usage of existing UML modeling tools. Second, we investigated not only representation, but also evaluation and instantiation aspects. Since these aspects are closely related and interdependent, we think that omitting only one of them would severely reduce the usefulness of the overall approach. Third, our solution relies on being part of a product line infrastructure, and in particular on the possibility of interfacing with a decision model. By doing so, we were able to further reduce the complexity of our approach and to focus on the issues that are unique to modeling family architectures in the UML.