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Product line adoption in industry: an experience report from the railway domain

Published: 19 October 2020 Publication History

Abstract

The software system controlling a train is typically deployed on various hardware architectures and must process various signals across those deployments. The increase of such customization scenarios and the needed adherence of the software to various safety standards in different application domains has led to the adoption of product line engineering within the railway domain. This paper explores the current state-of-practice of software product line development within a team developing industrial embedded software for a train propulsion control system. Evidence is collected using a focus group session with several engineers and through inspection of archival data. We report several benefits and challenges experienced during product line adoption and deployment. Furthermore, we identify and discuss improvement opportunities, focusing mainly on product line evolution and test automation.

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  • (2023)Managing Variability of Logistics Robot SystemProceedings of the 27th ACM International Systems and Software Product Line Conference - Volume A10.1145/3579027.3608995(234-241)Online publication date: 28-Aug-2023
  • (2023)Requirements Classification for Smart Allocation: A Case Study in the Railway Industry2023 IEEE 31st International Requirements Engineering Conference (RE)10.1109/RE57278.2023.00028(201-211)Online publication date: Sep-2023
  • (2022)In three steps to software product linesProceedings of the 26th ACM International Systems and Software Product Line Conference - Volume A10.1145/3546932.3547003(170-177)Online publication date: 12-Sep-2022
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    cover image ACM Conferences
    SPLC '20: Proceedings of the 24th ACM Conference on Systems and Software Product Line: Volume A - Volume A
    October 2020
    323 pages
    ISBN:9781450375696
    DOI:10.1145/3382025
    Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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    Publication History

    Published: 19 October 2020

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    Author Tags

    1. challenges and opportunities
    2. overloaded assets
    3. software product-line engineering

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    SPLC '20 Paper Acceptance Rate 17 of 49 submissions, 35%;
    Overall Acceptance Rate 167 of 463 submissions, 36%

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    Cited By

    View all
    • (2023)Managing Variability of Logistics Robot SystemProceedings of the 27th ACM International Systems and Software Product Line Conference - Volume A10.1145/3579027.3608995(234-241)Online publication date: 28-Aug-2023
    • (2023)Requirements Classification for Smart Allocation: A Case Study in the Railway Industry2023 IEEE 31st International Requirements Engineering Conference (RE)10.1109/RE57278.2023.00028(201-211)Online publication date: Sep-2023
    • (2022)In three steps to software product linesProceedings of the 26th ACM International Systems and Software Product Line Conference - Volume A10.1145/3546932.3547003(170-177)Online publication date: 12-Sep-2022
    • (2022)Using software product lines to create blockchain productsProceedings of the 26th ACM International Systems and Software Product Line Conference - Volume A10.1145/3546932.3547001(97-107)Online publication date: 12-Sep-2022
    • (2022)A Strategy to Lead with Multiple Dependencies in a Coding Branch Structure: A Case Study with Mobile Device Production2022 International Conference on Computer Technologies (ICCTech)10.1109/ICCTech55650.2022.00024(101-109)Online publication date: Feb-2022
    • (2022)On the relationship between similar requirements and similar softwareRequirements Engineering10.1007/s00766-021-00370-4Online publication date: 18-Jan-2022
    • (2022)Assisting Mentors in Selecting Newcomers’ Next Task in Software Product Lines: A Recommender System ApproachAdvanced Information Systems Engineering10.1007/978-3-031-07472-1_27(460-476)Online publication date: 3-Jun-2022
    • (2022)Model‐based generation of test scripts across product variants: An experience report from the railway industryJournal of Software: Evolution and Process10.1002/smr.249834:11Online publication date: 5-Aug-2022
    • (2021)Requirements-driven reuse recommendationProceedings of the 25th ACM International Systems and Software Product Line Conference - Volume A10.1145/3461001.3472729(210-210)Online publication date: 6-Sep-2021
    • (2021)Safety, security, and configurable software systemsProceedings of the 25th ACM International Systems and Software Product Line Conference - Volume A10.1145/3461001.3471147(148-159)Online publication date: 6-Sep-2021
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