The FOOM Method – Modeling Software Product Lines in Industrial Settings

This paper presents FOOM – Feature-based Object Oriented Modeling and its application to a family of sonar systems. FOOM is a synthesis of the FODA (Feature Oriented Domain Analysis) and Horseshoe models. The Unified Software Development Process (USP) is used as a template for describing the architectural transformation. FOOM focuses on identifying user-driven features throughout a product line’s architecture, organizing the architectural assets to lend them to substantial re-use, and instantiating multiple products from a single architecture. The paper introduces the notion of a feature class and feature listcontracts between the product line and products. The application of FOOM to sonar system is done systematically starting with the identification of a suitable base product, then architecture extraction is done; domain analysis is then carried out in order to identify the current and future members of the product family, and finally, product line architecture is developed.