Earlier this week, TNO-ESI arranged a webinar with Jacob Krüger, Assistant Professor at Eindhoven University of Technology. In the presentation “Do We Still Need This? Managing Variability in Modern Software Systems” he presented his research on development and evolution of variant-rich software systems. The presentation explained how successful systems are often cloned to create new variants until managing the variability becomes too complex and expensive. It discussed the transition from cloning towards platform-based software architectures and compared the development costs for new features and new variants, respectively, for the two cases, based on empirical data from industry. These insights are valuable to inform decision-making about when adopting a platform-based approach is strategic. However, Jacob also made clear that moving to a platform-based approach introduces its own challenges, such as ensuring software comprehension and quality, analyzing variability, aligning software and hardware release schedules, and deprecation of variable features.
The webinar attracted an audience of approximately 40 people from TNO-ESI, ASML, Thales, Canon, Vanderlande, ThermoFisher, and Radboud University Nijmegen. This strongly suggests that variability is still a main concern both in systems and software engineering that affects all parts of system development, from early architecting to implementation, testing, and evolution. I was thrilled to see that there was a lively discussion with questions and remarks. In retrospect, I wish we would have reserved more time to keep the conversation going. If you would like to discuss your particular variability challenges or ideas with Jacob, feel free to contact him.
TNO-ESI looks forward to arranging more webinars with experts from our eco-system of academic and industry partners in the field of software and system engineering for high-tech equipment.
