Supporting product configuration in application engineering using EXConfig

Nowadays systems are often developed following the product line approach in order to reduce time to market, achieve lower cost, and ensure high quality. To this end, common and variable requirements of product variants are specified as features in a feature model, so that each product variant can be configured and customized along the development lifecycle. While developers in family engineering tend to use variability management tools (e.g., pure::variants) for feature modeling and developing core assets for reuse, such sophisticated tools might be too complicated and inappropriate for product configuration in application engineering. In order to solve this challenge, this paper introduces an Excel-based product configurator called EXConfig, which focuses on product line features in the problem space and supports staged product configuration in application engineering. This tool can be easily customized and integrated with other system design tools or variability management tools, which connects application engineering and family engineering in development. The usage of this tool and its integration have been validated several times in industry.