National foreword

This British Standard is the UK implementation of ISO/IEC 26580:2021.

The UK participation in its preparation was entrusted to Technical Committee IST/15, Software and systems engineering.

A list of organizations represented on this committee can be obtained on request to its committee manager.

Contractual and legal considerations

This publication has been prepared in good faith, however no representation, warranty, assurance or undertaking (express or implied) is or will be made, and no responsibility or liability is or will be accepted by BSI in relation to the adequacy, accuracy, completeness or reasonableness of this publication. All and any such responsibility and liability is expressly disclaimed to the full extent permitted by the law.

This publication is provided as is, and is to be used at the recipient’s own risk.

The recipient is advised to consider seeking professional guidance with respect to its use of this publication.

This publication is not intended to constitute a contract. Users are responsible for its correct application.

Compliance with a British Standard cannot confer immunity from legal obligations.

This British Standard was published under the authority of the Standards Policy and Strategy Committee on 30 April 2021.

Foreword

ISO (the International Organization for Standardization) and IEC (the International Electrotechnical Commission) form the specialized system for worldwide standardization. National bodies that are members of ISO or IEC participate in the development of International Standards through technical committees established by the respective organization to deal with particular fields of technical activity. ISO and IEC technical committees collaborate in fields of mutual interest. Other international organizations, governmental and non-governmental, in liaison with ISO and IEC, also take part in the work.

The procedures used to develop this document and those intended for its further maintenance are described in the ISO/IEC Directives, Part 1. In particular, the different approval criteria needed for the different types of document should be noted. This document was drafted in accordance with the editorial rules of the ISO/IEC Directives, Part 2 (see www.iso.org/directives or www.iec.ch/members_experts/refdocs).

Attention is drawn to the possibility that some of the elements of this document may be the subject of patent rights. ISO and IEC shall not be held responsible for identifying any or all such patent rights. Details of any patent rights identified during the development of the document will be in the Introduction and/or on the ISO list of patent declarations received (see www.iso.org/patents) or the IEC list of patent declarations received (see patents.iec.ch).

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This document was prepared by Joint Technical Committee ISO/IEC JTC 1, Information technology, Subcommittee SC 7, Software and systems engineering.

Any feedback or questions on this document should be directed to the user’s national standards body. A complete listing of these bodies can be found at www.iso.org/members.html and www.iec.ch/national-committees.

Introduction

Feature-based software and systems product line engineering (“feature-based PLE” for short) is a specialization of software and systems product line (SSPL) engineering and management that is described in ISO/IEC 26550. ISO/IEC 26550 describes a very generalized approach to SSPL, focusing on the benefits of exploiting a common platform of reusable assets for a product family. Each organization that adopts SSPL under ISO/IEC 26550 is free to do so using their preferred techniques and methods.

What is the motivation for creating a standard for a specialization of SSPL? As the SSPL field has matured and achieved widespread attention in the industry, a specific and repeatable approach to SSPL has emerged that takes advantage of commercial off-the-shelf industrial-strength tools and technology, along with robust best practices for methods and processes, that automate and formalize many of the processes in domain and application engineering. The result is that less upfront analysis, design, and implementation effort is required prior to gaining the benefits from the approach.

While SSPL in general provides significant benefits, it also requires a significant investment of time and effort to adopt and to ultimately achieve those benefits. The feature-based PLE specialization is a more narrowly defined solution that can be supported by off-the-shelf tools and methods, which has resulted in lower investments when an organization adopts SSPL. Feature-based PLE embodies lessons learned about SSPL practices that have been shown to provide some of the highest benefits and returns (see, for example, References [2] and[8]).

This document provides a reference model consisting of an abstract representation of the key technical elements, tools, and methods of feature-based PLE. The predominant specializations of general SSPL that characterize feature-based PLE are:

a mapping from features to asset variation points that is sufficient to drive a fully automated configurator that produces assets specific to member products;
a methodological shift of all design and implementation effort, change management, and configuration management to domain engineering, so that application engineering is reduced to automated configuration of member product instances and testing of configured member products and member-product-specific assets.

This document embodies a distinct separation of concerns between the feature-based PLE technology providers and feature-based technology users. For each of these stakeholder concerns, the scope of this document is to define only what is necessary and sufficient to enable feature-based PLE practice. For technology providers, this imparts flexibility in how the necessary and sufficient technical capabilities are provided, as well as the opportunity to offer more expansive capabilities that are possible in an ideal solution. For technology users, this provides flexibility to select among the technology providers and to apply the methods that best match their technical and business objectives for feature-based PLE.

1 Scope

This document is a specialization of the more general reference model for software and systems product line engineering and management described in ISO/IEC 26550. The specialization defined herein addresses a class of methods and tools referred to as feature-based software and systems product line engineering, or feature-based PLE, which has emerged as a proven and repeatable product line engineering and management (PLE) practice supported by commercial tool providers.

This document:

provides the terms and definitions specific to feature-based PLE;
defines how feature-based PLE is a specialization within the general ISO/IEC 26550 reference model for product line engineering and management;
defines a reference model for the overall structure and processes of feature-based PLE and describes how the elements of the reference model fit together;
defines interrelationships and methods for applying the elements and tools of the product line reference model;
defines required and supporting tool capabilities.

In this document, products of feature-based PLE include digital work products that support the engineering of a system. Some of the artefacts are actually part of the delivered products, while other artefacts can be non-deliverable, such as physical or digital design models.

The intended audience for this document comprises:

technology providers who wish to provide automated tool support for the reference model and processes described in this document;
champions within an organization who wish to introduce feature-based PLE throughout that organization;
IT staff within a PLE organization who will introduce and maintain the necessary technology to support feature-based PLE;
practitioner stakeholders who will use the provided technology to practice feature-based PLE;
technical and business managers who will sponsor and direct the methods necessary to practice feature-based PLE;
university professors, researchers, corporate trainers, and other educators who will create and share pedagogical materials about feature-based PLE and its benefits.

2 Normative references

3 Terms and definitions

4 Overview of feature-based product line engineering

4.1 General

4.2 Shared assets

4.3 Features

4.4 Automated means of production

5 A feature-based specialization of software and systems product line engineering

6 Reference model for the feature-based approach to software and systems product line engineering

6.1 General

6.2 Key elements of the feature-based PLE factory

6.3 Relationships among the key elements of the factory

6.4 Reference model layers

6.5 Feature language

6.6 Support for a hierarchical product line of product lines

6.7 Other concerns

7 Technology layer

7.1 General

7.2 Feature language

7.3 Feature catalogue

7.4 Bill-of-features portfolio

7.5 Shared asset supersets

7.6 Product asset instances

7.7 PLE factory configurator

7.8 PLE factory development environment

8 Technical organization management layer

8.1 General

8.2 Relationship to ISO/IEC 26550 technical management process group and ISO/IEC 26556

8.3 Feature catalogue engineering

8.4 Bill-of-features portfolio engineering

8.5 Shared asset superset engineering

8.6 Automated configuration of the product asset instances

8.7 Verification, validation, and product delivery of the product asset instances

8.8 Configuration management

8.9 Traceability management

8.10 Change management

9 Business organization management layer

9.1 General

9.2 Incorporation of ISO/IEC 26550, ISO/IEC 26556 and ISO/IEC 26562 processes

9.3 Fund the PLE factory

Bibliography

BS ISO/IEC 26580:2021

Software and systems engineering. Methods and tools for the feature-based approach to software and systems product line engineering

Current

Published:

30 Apr 2021