Visualizing Variability Management in Requirements Engineering Through Formal Concept Analysis

While research on the visualization and documentation of variability in software artefacts by means of e.g. feature diagrams is well established, most of these documentation methods in the field of variability management assume the presence of variability as a given fact. The decision whether variability within the requirements should actually give rise to variability in the envisaged software artefact is often taken unconsciously and as a result techniques to visualize and document the amount, the structure and the impact of requirements evolution on variability are scarce. This paper provides a real life proof of concept that formal concept analysis (FCA) can be used for the visualization and documentation of variability re- lated decisions during (early) requirements engineering. FCA is used in a real-life case study to check the usability of FCA as a visualization method to support variability management during requirements engineering. The real-life case study also provides initial proof that useful documentation can be obtained by representing the requirements in a FCA concept lattice.