Towards a component-based system model to improve the quality of highly configurable systems

Abstract

Due to ever-evolving software developments processes, companies are motivated to develop desired quality products quickly and effectively. Industries are now focusing on the delivery of configurable systems to provide several services to a wide range of customers by making different configurations in a single largest system. Nowadays, component-based systems are highly demanded due to their capability of reusability and restructuring of existing components to develop new systems. Moreover, product line engineering is the major branch of the component-based system for developing a series of systems. Software product line engineering (SPLE) provides the ability to design several software modifications according to customer needs in a cost-effective manner. Researchers are trying to tailor the software product line (SPL) process that integrates agile development technologies to overcome the issues faced during the execution of the SPL process such as delay in product delivery, restriction to requirements change, and exhaustive initial planning. The selection of suitable components, the need for documentation, and tracing back the user requirements in the agile-integrated product line (APL) models still need to improve. Furthermore, configurable systems demand the selected features to be the least dependent. In this paper, a hybrid APL model, quality enhanced application product line engineering (QeAPLE) is proposed that provides support for highly configurable systems (HCS) by evaluating the dependency of features before making the final selection. It also has a documentation and requirement traceability function to ensure that the product meets the desired quality. Two-fold assessments are undertaken to validate the suggested model, with the proposed model being deployed on an active project. After that, we evaluated the proposed model performance and effectiveness using after implementing it in a real-world environment and compared the results with an existing method using statistical analysis. The results of the experimental study proofs that the proposed model is practically and statistically significant as compared to the existing method in terms of effectiveness and participants’ performance. Hence, the statistical results of the comparative analysis show that the proposed model improved ease of understanding and adaptability, required effort, high-quality achievement, and version management are significant i.e., more the 50% as compared to the exiting method i.e., less than 50%. The proposed model offers to assist in the development of a highly configurable system that achieves the needed quality. Therefore, the proposed model manages the variation identification, versions control, components dependency for correct selection of components, and validation activities from domain engineering to application engineering.

Keywords

• Agile software development
• Highly configurable systems
• Quality and process improvement
• Software product lines
• Variability management