@article {41831,
author={ Ebrahim Bagheri and David Benavides and Klaus Schmid and Per Runeson},
title={Foreword to the special issue on empirical evidence on software product line engineering},
journal={Springer},
year={2016},
pages={1579–1585},
doi={https://doi.org/10.1007/s10664-016-9439-3},
abstract={<p>The software product line engineering paradigm promotes sharing common core assets for building similar software systems. Researchers have argued that the deployment of product line techniques can lead to lower development costs as well as improved delivery time. There has also been some indication that, if systematically executed, products derived from a software product line can enjoy higher quality levels given repeatedly tested core assets are used in the development process (van der Linden et al. 2007). Researchers have explored many exciting research challenges at different levels of abstraction ranging from high-level metamodels for commonality and variability representation (Chen et al. 2009) to low-level pre-processor directives for incorporating variability in the code base (Liebig et al. 2010).</p> <p>There is also a significant body of knowledge on experiences in practically transferring or deploying software product line research outcomes to industrial partners and real-world settings (van der Linden et al. 2007). However, recent systematic reviews of the literature reveals that there is space for more comprehensive and inclusive research that would provide empirical evidence on the practicality and applicability of research outcomes. For instance, Ahnassay et al. (2013) observed that within product line research published between 2006 and 2011 that had an empirical evaluation component only 34 % of the papers interacted or involved industrial practitioners. This can point to the need for more in-depth study of the practicality of the approaches that are proposed by the product line community that would involve the target audience of the research outcomes. This observation can be complemented with the fact that the majority of the papers did not provide any concrete foundation for their problem statement. In other words, the problem definition was taken for granted and only the solution was described.</p>}
}