The new feature interaction challenge

Abstract

Feature interactions are a major threat to software modularity and impair compositional development and reasoning. A feature interaction occurs when the behavior of one feature is affected by the presence of another feature. Usually, interactions cannot be deduced easily from the behaviors of the individual features involved. The feature-interaction problem became a crisis in the telecommunications industry in the 1980s, when the growing number of features led to uncontrolled software complexity and long development cycles. Since then, the problem has been recognized in many other domains---each with its own manifestations, challenges, and possible solutions. In this talk, I report on our experiences with the feature-interaction problem in different areas and applications. The primary goal is to raise awareness of the fact that the feature-interaction problem is real and worthwhile to study. Furthermore, by means of recent experimental results, I emphasize that there are different types of feature interactions and that these type are related. I close the talk with a call to action to accept and approach the New Feature Interaction Challenge, which is to understand and exploit the different types of feature interactions to build better software (e.g., by developing better tools for feature-interaction testing).