Applying visualisation techniques in software product lines

Software product lines of industrial size can easily incorporate thousands of variation points. This scale of variability can become extremely complex to manage resulting in a product development process that bears significant costs. One technique that can be applied beneficially in this context is visualisation. Visualisation is widely used in software engineering and has proven useful to amplify human cognition in data intensive applications. Adopting this technique in software product line engineering can help stakeholders in supporting essential work tasks and in enhancing their understanding of large and complex product lines. The research presented in this paper describes an integrated meta-model and research tool that employs visualisation techniques to address significant software product line tasks such as variability management and product derivation. Examples of the tasks are described and the ways in which these tasks can be further supported by utilising visualisation techniques are explained.