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K. Feichtinger, K. Meixner, R. Rabiser, S. Biffl:
"A Systematic Study as Foundation for a Variability Modeling Body of Knowledge";
Talk: 47th Euromicro Conference on Software Engineering and Advanced Applications (SEAA), Palermo, Italy; 2021-09-01 - 2021-09-03; in: "2021 47th Euromicro Conference on Software Engineering and Advanced Applications (SEAA)", IEEE, (2021), ISBN: 978-1-6654-2705-0.

In software product line engineering, engineers and
researchers use variability models to explicitly represent the commonalities and variability of software systems to foster systematic
reuse. Variability modeling has been a field of extensive research
for over three decades, including Systematic Literature Reviews
(SLRs) and Systematic Mapping Studies (SMSs) to categorize
and compare different approaches. Much effort goes into such
(secondary) studies, partly because they are often done from
scratch and searching for relevant studies for specific research
questions is tedious. Systematic reuse of search results would
benefit the community by improving the efficiency and quality
of such studies. In this paper, we report on creating a curated
data set of 78 key SLR/SMS publications and primary studies
(e.g., surveys) on variability modeling by conducting a tertiary
SMS on variability modeling. When using such a curated paper
data set for a secondary study, we estimate researchers can save
up to 50 percent effort in the search phase. We present the
publicly available data set, which includes categorization of the
studies and provides update mechanisms. We see our data set
as a foundation for building a Variability Modeling Body of
Knowledge (VMBoK). We illustrate the efficient use of the data
set in two SLR examples. We argue that our process and the data
set can be useful for various research communities to improve
the efficiency and quality of secondary (and tertiary) studies.

Systematic Literature Review, Systematic Mapping Study, Variability Modeling, Software Product Lines.