Towards an integrated approach for managing the variability and evolution of both software and hardware components

Although the development of mass-customized products has been successfully applied to both hardware and software, companies struggle managing the variability and evolution of software-intensive products within a coherent product engineering approach. While the variability and evolution of software alone is manageable, managing both software and hardware within one product line is a complex task and requires an integrated approach. Moreover, as the release cycle for hardware is longer than for software, a product line of hardware and software is usually developed in generations. While one generation is validated and produced, the next generation is already planned and designed, reusing both software and hardware of previous generations. Thus, the different generations and artifacts shared between them must be managed together. Finally, when approaches directly assign software to hardware, managing their evolution becomes increasingly complex. Evolved resource demands may be missed, exhausting the resources provided by the hardware, possibly leading to degraded or faulty functionality. To remedy this, we refine the Unified Conceptual Model to our Variability Model for both Software and Hardware capturing the notion of product line generations, versions and variants of both software and hardware components, as well as resource demands of software on hardware. This is the first step towards the development of an integrated product engineering approach for managing the variability and evolution of software-intensive products.