A systematic study as foundation for a variability modeling body of knowledge

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.