Product configuration support for nontechnicians: Customer-centered software product-line engineering

Johannes Kepler University Linz has collaborated with Siemens VAI to develop an approach that involves nontechnicians in product configuration. Software product-line engineering (PLE), which aims to reduce software development costs and time to market in particular domains by increasing productivity through extensive reuse, does not provide integrated product configuration capabilities supporting both nontechnicians and developers. The research aims to develop an integrated, automated approach to support sales people in their interactions with customers while expediting the generation of valid product configurations. The approach is based on a product-line variability model that describes the assets' commonalities and their variability. The selected assets together with the generated configurations thereby allow assembling products from the existing product line architecture in a largely automated fashion.