Workshop Goals

Over the last decade, the management of variability has become a major concern in the development, maintenance and evolution of software-intensive systems, especially in software product line engineering.

To support variability management, numerous variability modeling techniques have been proposed both by academia and industry. Many of them have their roots in feature modelling¹ or orthogonal variability modelling² but significant contributions also have come from related areas including configuration management, domain analysis, requirements engineering, formal methods and generative programming.

Previous workshops have already addressed variability modeling (like the ones at SPLC ’06, SPLC ’04, ICSE ’03 and the Groningen workshops), but research in the field is still fragmented.

We need to more thoroughly understand how the different variability modelling approaches complement each other and how we can improve and integrate these approaches to better meet the needs of practitioners.

As a first step in that direction, the VaMoS workshop will pursue the following goals:

Compare current approaches,
Identify research challenges,
Establish a research agenda for variability modeling.

Workshop Format

VaMoS is planned to be a highly interactive event. Each session is organized in order to stimulate discussions among the presenters of papers, discussants and the other participants. Typically, after a paper is presented, it is immediately discussed by two pre-assigned discussants, after which a free discussion involving all participants follows. Each session is closed by a general discussion of all papers presented in the session. For VaMoS, each of the sessions will consist of two paper presentations, two paper discussions, and one general discussion.

Which roles are there?

Three particular roles are taken on by the VaMoS attendees

Presenter: A presenter obviously presents his paper but additionally will be asked to take on the role of discussant for the other paper in his session (all the papers will be distributed to the participants in PDF format approx. two weeks prior to the event).

Discussant: A discussant prepares the discussion of a paper. Each paper is assigned to two discussants (typically the presenter of the other paper in the same session and a member of the program or organization committee or a presenter of another session). The discussants task is to give a critical review of the paper directly after its presentation. This task will be guided by a predefined set of questions provided by the VaMoS organizers.

Session Chair: A session chair introduces the presenters of the papers in a session. The session chair takes care of the time, and moderates the discussion of a paper after its presentation as well as the general discussions at the end of the session.

¹ K. Kang, S. Cohen, J. Hess, W. Novak, and S. Peteson. Feature-Oriented Domain Analysis (FODA) Feasibility Study. Technical Report CMU/SEI-90-TR-21, Software Engineering Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, Nov. 1990.

² F.Bachmann, M. Goedicke, J. Leite, R. Nord, K. Pohl, B. Ramesh, and A. Vilbig. A Meta-model for Representing Variability in Product Family Development Software Product-Family Engineering: 5th International Workshop, PFE 2003, Siena, Italy, Nov. 4-6, 2003.

First International Workshop on Variability Modelling of Software-intensive Systems Limerick, Ireland — January 16–18, 2007
Home Organisation Call for Papers Workshop Goals & Format Submissions Important dates Program Committee Venue Program & Schedule Registration	Workshop Goals Over the last decade, the management of variability has become a major concern in the development, maintenance and evolution of software-intensive systems, especially in software product line engineering. To support variability management, numerous variability modeling techniques have been proposed both by academia and industry. Many of them have their roots in feature modelling¹ or orthogonal variability modelling² but significant contributions also have come from related areas including configuration management, domain analysis, requirements engineering, formal methods and generative programming. Previous workshops have already addressed variability modeling (like the ones at SPLC ’06, SPLC ’04, ICSE ’03 and the Groningen workshops), but research in the field is still fragmented. We need to more thoroughly understand how the different variability modelling approaches complement each other and how we can improve and integrate these approaches to better meet the needs of practitioners. As a first step in that direction, the VaMoS workshop will pursue the following goals: Compare current approaches, Identify research challenges, Establish a research agenda for variability modeling. Workshop Format VaMoS is planned to be a highly interactive event. Each session is organized in order to stimulate discussions among the presenters of papers, discussants and the other participants. Typically, after a paper is presented, it is immediately discussed by two pre-assigned discussants, after which a free discussion involving all participants follows. Each session is closed by a general discussion of all papers presented in the session. For VaMoS, each of the sessions will consist of two paper presentations, two paper discussions, and one general discussion. Which roles are there? Three particular roles are taken on by the VaMoS attendees Presenter: A presenter obviously presents his paper but additionally will be asked to take on the role of discussant for the other paper in his session (all the papers will be distributed to the participants in PDF format approx. two weeks prior to the event). Discussant: A discussant prepares the discussion of a paper. Each paper is assigned to two discussants (typically the presenter of the other paper in the same session and a member of the program or organization committee or a presenter of another session). The discussants task is to give a critical review of the paper directly after its presentation. This task will be guided by a predefined set of questions provided by the VaMoS organizers. Session Chair: A session chair introduces the presenters of the papers in a session. The session chair takes care of the time, and moderates the discussion of a paper after its presentation as well as the general discussions at the end of the session. ¹ K. Kang, S. Cohen, J. Hess, W. Novak, and S. Peteson. Feature-Oriented Domain Analysis (FODA) Feasibility Study. Technical Report CMU/SEI-90-TR-21, Software Engineering Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, Nov. 1990. ² F.Bachmann, M. Goedicke, J. Leite, R. Nord, K. Pohl, B. Ramesh, and A. Vilbig. A Meta-model for Representing Variability in Product Family Development Software Product-Family Engineering: 5th International Workshop, PFE 2003, Siena, Italy, Nov. 4-6, 2003.

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