Teaching Software Product Lines: A Snapshot of Current Practices and Challenges

Teaching Software Product Lines
A Snapshot of Current Practices and Challenges
(Journal First Presentation at SPLC 2018)
Mathieu Acher Roberto E. Lopez-Herrejon Rick Rabiser
University of Rennes 1
IRISA/Inria
Rennes France
mathieu.acher@irisa.fr
École de Technologie
Supérieure
Montreal, Canada
roberto.lopez@etsmtl.ca
CDL MEVSS, ISSE
Johannes Kepler University
Linz, Austria
rick.rabiser@jku.at

2018 | Acher, Lopez-Herrejon, Rabiser (TOCE article: SPL/variability and teaching) https://teaching.variability.io
Paper:
ACM Transactions on Computing
Education, vol. 18(1), pp. 2:1-2:31, 2017.
Repository:
http://teaching.variability.io/
SPLTea workshops:
http://spltea.irisa.fr
(“Education and SPL” in the CfPs of
SPLC 2017 and 2018)
Background/Initiatives

Software Product Lines and Variability
Now well-established in research and industry
Body of knowledge is growing
3

SPLs and Teaching
• Teach or perish! What’s the point of doing research in this
field if you’re unable to disseminate your results and train the
engineers of tomorrow?
• Education has a key role to play in disseminating the SPL knowledge
• Research can also benefit from teaching (get feedback)
• We know there are initiatives to collect SPL knowledge (e.g.,
ESPLA Catalogue, SPLOT, …) but it remains unclear:
• what is the material available for teaching
• what are the possible gaps and difficulties faced
• Teaching SPLs is challenging
• Relatively young discipline
• SPLE encompasses a variety of topics (SE, PL, AI, …)
4

In a nutshell, there is a central
question
How to teach software
product lines and
variability?
5

Research Method
Stakeholders of
Software Product
Line Teaching
Survey on Teaching
of Software
Product Lines
SPLTea Workshops on
Software Product
Lines and Teaching
Survey on Learning
about Software
Product Lines
Researchers Educators Practitioners Students
Our Initiatives
Analyses of the State of Practice
Curriculum (e.g., length of course, topics
covered, audience, …)
Material (e.g., textbooks, tools used, ...)
Experience Reports
Challenges
Recommendations
Suggestions to improve the practice
Key messages and concrete actions
Analyses and
Discussions
Our Results

#1 Survey on Teaching of
Software Product Lines

Survey Design
• 91 contacts
• pool of SPL researchers we know teach
• search for SPL courses online
• review SPLC and VaMoS papers
• On-line questionnaire
(http://www.surveygizmo.com/s3/13423
46/Teaching-Software-Product-Lines)
• 13 enumerative and 5 open questions
• Feedback by colleagues
• 34 complete responses and 15 partial
• Decision: only analyze complete
8

Survey Results
Respondents and their institutions
• 34 responses from 13 countries
• Avg. SPL experience 10yrs, avg. SPL teaching experience 6yrs
• Half say their research exp. = their teaching exp.
• Institutions
• 15 research-focused
• 9 teaching-focused (colleges)
• 7 have both focuses
• 3 industrial institutions
• Departments
• CS (13), SE (9), IT (2)
• others (10) -- all CS-related
• 16 full and self-contained SPL courses
• 18 teach SPL topics as part of other courses
9
Austria, 2
Canada, 1
Colombia, 1
France, 2
Germany,
12
Israel, 2
Italy, 1
Japan, 1
Korea, Rep.
Of, 1
Spain, 3
Switzerland,
1
USA, 6
Portugal, 1

Survey Results
Literature used
• 28 respondents use these books
• 25 use research papers, selected based on personal preferences
• 12 use case studies, e.g., by van der Linden et al. 2007; BigLever;
Renault, STAGO, LINUX, and SPLOT; and own case studies
10
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
Apel et al.
2013
Clements
and
Northrop
2001
Czarnecki
and
Eisenecker
2000
Gomaa
2005
Pohl et al.
2005
van der
Linden et
al. 2007
Weiss and
Lai 1999

Survey Results
Tools used
SPL Tool used by
None 8
FeatureIDE 6
BigLever's GEARS 4
FeatureHouse 3
pure system's pure::variants 3
AHEAD 2
CIDE 2
CVL 2
Feature Modelling Plug-in (FMP) 2
DOPLER, EasyProducer, FaMa, Familiar, FeatureMapper, Munge,
SPLAR, SPLOT, VARIAMOS, Varmod
1
each
C++, Metaprogramming, Software Generators, Xtext, MPS 1
Different tools for creating feature diagrams and UML-based models 1
Feature modeling UML tools extended for SPL 1
Haskell-Embedded Variation DSL 1
Own research prototypes 1
11
also see the survey by Berger et al. VaMoS 2013

Survey Results
Length, audience
• Most courses are held over a semester (26)
• 3 "on demand", 2 as week-long courses, quarter (1), 1-2 days
seminars (1), and with a flexible schedule (1)
• Average course length 24 hours (min: 1h; max: 120h)
12
0
2
4
6
8
10
12
14
Only Undergrads
Only Grads
Only Industry
People
Undergrads and
Grads
Grads and Industry
people
Undergrads
students and
Industry people
Undergrads, Grads,
and Industry people

Survey Results
Practical time, SPL lifecycle coverage
• Practical time/overall course time 65% in average
13
Topic Department
CS SE OT
Total
Requirements engineering 7 4 12 23
Testing 3 1 4 8
Modelling 9 8 13 30
Implementation 9 8 8 25
Maintenance & Evolution 9 3 5 17
Reverse engineering & SPL Adoption 7 2 1 10
Processes 5 6 8 19
Other 5 2 3 10
CS: Computer Science, SE: Software Engineering, OT: Other departments

Survey Results
Challenges of teaching SPL
• Lack of and availability of well-documented real-world examples and
case studies suitable for teaching (16)
• Complexity of the subject and required background knowledge (9)
• Lack of and availability of SPL tools (7)
• Acceptance on the curriculum and opening the mind of students (4)
14
“Even software engineering can be hard to teach as
developing large-scale systems does not connect to
students hands-on experience of developing rather
small solutions. Teaching SPL means SE for many
systems, this does even less relate to students' experiences”

Survey Results
How to improve the state of teaching SPL
• Improved textbook examples and case studies (13)
• Better tools for students (7)
• Broaden the focus of teaching SPLs (3)
• Other ideas
• videos of experts to motivate SPLs and explain key concepts and ideas
• incorporate the notions and terminology of SPLs more in other courses
• develop a standard curriculum and evaluation scheme for teaching SPLs
15

Survey Results
Impact of teaching SPL
• On research
• Student participation in research evaluations (11)
• Finding research personnel (8)
• Feedback on and discussion about tools, examples, case studies (6)
• Connecting with industry (5)
• On practice
• Teaching SPLE = preparation of introduction of SPLE in industry (13)
• …and increases awareness of SPL in industry and trains future
practitioners (7)
• …and can be the start of industry-academia collab. projects (2)
16

SPLTea’14 (Florence, Italy, SPLC 2014)
• 30+ attendees
• 3 experience reports
• Industry Panel
• Dr. Paul Clements, VP of customer success at BigLever
• Dr. Martin Becker, head of Embedded Systems
Development at Fraunhofer IESE
• Dr. Steve Livengood, Software Architect at Samsung
Research America
• Dr. Juha Savolainen, (at that time) SW Director at Danfoss
Power Electronics

Key points discussed at the
industry panel
• SPL infuses additional complexity in the software engineering
problems – students should be aware of it.
• Treat variability in the same way as other basic functional
and non-functional properties
• Make SPL courses more “realistic”
• Industry involvement in the teaching of SPLs should be seen as
a mutually beneficial activity
• Product line tools used in industry can/should be used in
teaching
19

Experience reports and insigths
• Variability in… teaching experiences:
• Seidl and Domachowska presented their experiences on ’Teaching
Variability Engineering to Cognitive Psychologists’
• McGregor reported about ’Ten Years of the Arcade Game Maker
Pedagogical Product Line’
• Collet et al. presented their ’Experiences in Teaching Variability Modeling
and Model-driven Generative Techniques’
• Other discussions at the workshops
• Need for case studies
• Curriculum and different ways to teach SPL knowledge
• Populating a repository of teaching material
20

SPLTea’15 (Nashville, USA, SPLC 2015)
• Brainstorming about a repository of teaching material for product
lines and variability
• Questions like:
• What could be the desirable features, services, underlying technology?
• How to collect more resources?
• How to involve industry?
• How to advertise the existence of the repository?
• For educators only? researchers? students? practitioners? both?
• How to build a network of SPL educators?
• How to make it possible for people to browse and understand the SPL
knowledge of the repository?
• Result and ongoing effort: http://teaching.variability.io
21

8 Courses, 7 Countries, 21 Reponses
23

Missed student interests
• More practical examples and tools or more about recent
case studies or experience reports from SPLs
• They wanted but did not learn about the barriers for
adopting SPL concepts in a real software organization and
how to introduce the SPL culture in a company
• Would have wished for more links between model-driven
engineering and SPL engineering
24
“SPL engineering often seems to be presented as a (too)
ideal approach to develop software but does not (enough)
take into account the reality that existing (legacy) software
still needs to be maintained and/or refactored into an SPL”

Challenges students perceived
• Seven students (all without industry job) think that “it is
very challenging to understand the general concept of
(large-scale) reuse as a student”
• Understanding the basic concepts of SPL engineering,
especially “imagining how it will work in practice is difficult”
• A lot of background knowledge is required to understand
SPLs, especially a lot of experience in software
engineering
25

Suggestions by students
• Include more practical activities and discussions and details on
how to transfer the theoretical knowledge to the real world (e.g.,
“providing detailed solutions to practical exercises”)
• Let students try out commercial SPL tools
• Compare SPL engineering with other recent approaches such
as agile development
26
“It would be a good idea to work on one big, concrete
project throughout the semester to experience the
development of a SPL from scratch”

Wrap-up
Stakeholders of
Software Product
Line Teaching
Survey on Teaching
of Software
Product Lines
SPLTea Workshops on
Software Product
Lines and Teaching
Survey on Learning
about Software
Product Lines
Researchers Educators Practitioners Students
Our Initiatives
Analyses of the State of Practice
Curriculum (e.g., length of course, topics
covered, audience, …)
Material (e.g., textbooks, tools used, ...)
Experience Reports
Challenges
Recommendations
Suggestions to improve the practice
Key messages and concrete actions
Analyses and
Discussions
Our Results

Lessons/Recommendations
• Tools are here and no longer a source of anxiety/an obstacle: educators
now have a collection of tools for modeling and implementing SPLs
• Curriculum integration: there are many possible scenarios
• Full course vs. as part of other courses
• Teach SPLs at the graduate levels
• Towards a baseline curriculum and evaluation scheme; customizable!
• From exercises to case studies
• Despite early efforts, encompassing all SPL activities within a unique case study
remains challenging (consider a subset?!)
• Innovate, take risks, possibly deviate from current practices, and
eventually report on failures or successes (grow the body of
knowledge!)
28
Repository: http://teaching.variability.io/
TOCE article: http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/3088440
SPLTea Workshops: http://spltea.irisa.fr
Questions? mathieu.acher@irisa.fr -- @acherm, @RickRabiser

Teaching Software Product Lines: A Snapshot of Current Practices and Challenges

Recomendados

Recomendados

Más contenido relacionado

Más de University of Rennes, INSA Rennes, Inria/IRISA, CNRS

Más de University of Rennes, INSA Rennes, Inria/IRISA, CNRS (20)

Último

Último (20)

Teaching Software Product Lines: A Snapshot of Current Practices and Challenges

Notas del editor