Incorporating SPL knowledge into a requirements process for information systems - an architecture-driven tailoring approach

Software product lines (SPL) are a key concept for streamlining software development. However, building new information systems based on a SPL is often less efficient than expected because customer requirements often do not fit the capabilities or constraints of a reuse asset base. Especially in cases where SPL requirements are documented insufficiently, this problem is almost unsolvable. To cope with this challenge, a novel approach for flexibly aligning customer requirements with the capabilities of a SPL is therefore needed. Our idea is to tailor requirements processes based on the characteristics of a given reuse asset base without the need to reengineer all SPL requirements explicitly. To make this happen, an SPL-driven tailoring method that incorporates knowledge about a reuse asset base into a state-of-the-art requirements process is proposed in this paper. By applying this method in a case study, we have shown its feasibility and gathered initial experience regarding the suitability of the resulting requirements process.