Change Impact Analysis for Evolving Configuration Decisions in Product Line Use Case Models

Product Line Engineering is a key practice in many software development environments where systems are complex and developed for multiple customers with varying needs. At the same time, many business contexts are use case-driven where use cases are the main artifacts driving requirements elicitation and many other development activities. In such contexts, variability information is often not explicitly represented, which leads to the ad-hoc change management of development artifacts such as use cases, domain models and test cases in product families. This work is about achieving automated and effective change management in a product family within the context of use case-driven development and system testing. To this end, we present the following: (1) a modeling methodology for capturing variability information in Product Line (PL) use case and domain models, (2) an approach for automated configuration of Product Specific (PS) use case and domain models, (3) a change impact analysis approach for evolving configuration decisions in PL use case models, and (4) an approach for automated classification and prioritization of system test cases in a family of products.