Variant Analysis in Changing System Landscapes

In order to raise understanding of similarity in a set of related systems, the Variant Analysis approach has been developed and applied in various industrial settings over the last decade. The paper discusses typical analysis goals and the respective approaches. Additionally, it motivates the need for an incremental and iterative analysis approach to support settings, where the scope of the analysis changes over time. Examples to this end are adding, updating, or removing variants, versions, or system modules.