Evaluation of Systematic Variability Management for Requirement to Architecture Concern in Software Product Line Shahliza Abd Halim Software Engineering Department Faculty of Computer Science and Information System Universiti Teknologi Malaysia 81310 Skudai, Johor. shahliza@utm.my Dayang Norhayati Abang Jawawi Software Engineering Department Faculty of Computer Science and Information System Universiti Teknologi Malaysia 81310 Skudai, Johor. dayang@utm.my Safaai Deris Software Engineering Department Faculty of Computer Science and Information System Universiti Teknologi Malaysia 81310 Skudai, Johor. safaai@utm.my ABSTRACT Software Product Line (SPL) is an effective approach in software reuse where core assets can be shared among the members of the product line with an explicit treatment of variability. However, variability can be done by adapting this core asset to meet the changing needs of customer thus further highlights the needs to integrate requirements to architecture. We have proposed an evaluation framework based on issues inherent in SPL and integrating requirement to architecture. Using this evaluation framework, we evaluate six core assets development approaches in a systematic and consistent manner and reflect on current investigations and open issues that provide foundation for further research in this area. This paper presents an investigation and highlights on the desired criteria to provide better means to integrate the requirement to architecture. The evaluation results shows there are still room for improvements in the existing approaches towards a better integration between requirements to architecture. General Terms Documentation, Design Keywords Requirement, architecture, software product lines, variability management 1. INTRODUCTION In Software Product Line (SPL) reuse occur with the use of core assets [1-3]. With core assets, overlaps among members of the family can be leverage by merging common parts core asset and at the same time managing its variabilities. With variability, the same core asset in the product line can be reused by members of the product line. Reuse can be done by adapting this core asset to meet the changing needs of customers. Thus, the building of the most important core asset, the PL Architecture [1, 3] requires the understanding of variant requirement and precisely describing them [4, 5]. However, transitions of variability between higher level of abstraction to realization level still remain vague due to the difficulty in relating variability at the requirement (analysis) and realization (implementation) level [6-8]. Furthermore, the transformation between requirement specifications to software architecture is a creative task that is not much supported by the current software development [9-11]. Therefore, it is compulsory to define, identify and represent the variations systematically and explicitly at requirement level [12, 13]. Systematic variability management research challenge can be organized into three main areas: Designing variability; Using Variability and Evolving variability [14]. In this research our focus is on the second research area where the use of variability designed in an earlier phase of the lifecycle and where the management of variability and variation points remains a major challenge due to the numerous feature interactions and variation points to represent the variability in different level of abstractions in software development[15]. This paper highlights the issues in requirement to architecture concern in core asset development approaches in SPL and evaluates six core assets development approaches with proposed evaluation framework criteria. The remainder of this paper is organized as follows: In section 2, this paper discusses on the systematic variability management in Software Product Line (SPL). Section 3 discusses the fundamental issues in both SPL and requirement to architecture concern. Section 4 discusses related works on core asset SPL development approach and its relation with requirement to architecture concern. In section 5, criteria for evaluation framework is proposed and is used to evaluate related works. Section 6 discuss on the evaluation. Lastly, section 7 describe the conclusion and future and work. 2. FUNDAMENTAL ISSUES FOR SPL AND REQUIREMENT TO ARCHITECTURE CONCERN In this paper, we highlighted three important issues that are central in SPL and also in the requirement to architecture consideration. The three issues are:- 2.1 Variability as a First Class Representation In SPL development, variability must be considered explicitly as a first class representation [7, 16] and the