Variability is the ability of a system to be efficiently extended, changed, customized or configured for use in a particular context.
Variability management throughout the different phases of the development lifecycle of complex systems becomes a primary
concern that needs to be addressed. Addressing issues related to modeling, managing and reasoning about software
variability at architectural level gained a special interest. In this context, software architects need to address variability
as an architectural key concept and first-class quality attribute. They call for methods, formalisms, techniques and tools to model,
represent and evaluate variability. All these needs require a better understanding of variability management and more theoretical
foundations of architectural variability.
The purpose of this workshop is to promote the theme of variability management from architectural perspectives.
It aims at contributing to the development of a basic understanding of the notion of variability in the software architecture.
In particular, it provides a venue for researchers and practitioners interested in software variability management, in order to
identify possible points of synergy, common problems and solutions, as well as visions for the future of the area.
Topics of the workshop include but are not limited to:
- Methods and techniques to support variability in software architecture
- Models, languages, notations and formalisms for variability in software architecture
- Formal approaches for architectural variability specification, modeling and analysis
- Managing variability in dynamic software architecture
- Quality attributes and variability in software architectures
- Variability and architectural patterns, styles, aspect and viewpoints
- Variability in service-oriented architectures, component-base architectures, …
- Traceability between architectural representation of variability and other representation levels (business level, implementation level, …)
- Variability and model driven architecture and code generation
- Architectural variability to support runtime adaptation
- Software architecture variability discovery and recovery
- State-of-the-art and state-of-practice of architectural variability handling
- Tools support for software architecture variability
- Industrial experiments, empirical studies and case studies and practice reports related to variability management at the architectural level