IRatePL2C: Importance Rating-based Approach for Product Lines Collaborative Configuration

TL;DR

The paper introduces IRatePL2C, a polynomial-time approach for configuring product lines by merging stakeholder preferences and resolving conflicts based on importance ratings, improving efficiency over previous exponential methods.

Contribution

It presents a novel importance rating-based conflict resolution method for product line configuration with polynomial complexity, enhancing scalability and stakeholder preference integration.

Findings

Polynomial complexity of IRatePL2C improves scalability.

Effective conflict resolution based on stakeholder importance ratings.

Validated with an illustrative example demonstrating practical applicability.

Abstract

Some of them proposed an approach in which involved stakeholders can freely configure the product line without being constrained by the choices made the other ones. The core of any proposed approach in this context focuses on how conflictual situations are resolved. Few works consider stakeholders preferences in their resolution process. However, to generate a valid solution satisfying all constraints, they generally rely on a process of exponential complexity. In this work, we propose the IRatePL2C approach, which resolution strategy relies on importance degrees assigned by the stakeholders to their initial configuration choices. IRatePL2C starts by merging stakeholders' configurations and then detecting and resolving the conflicts according to their type: explicit or implicit in sequential steps. Finally, domain constraints are propagated and the process is reiterated to reach a final valid configuration. An illustrative example is presented to evaluate the approach. The complexity of IRatePL2C is polynomial which an important advantage compared with previous works.