An important reason for explicitly introducing variability into a system is to obtain reuse of software. Building a separate system for each variant means that the overall development effort and time will increase, and that time to market will be seriously affected. In addition, having multiple systems with significant overlap among them seriously affects the programming and management effort needed in maintenance.

The realization of variability in systems can be achieved using a wide range of techniques. These techniques can be classified into generation of a specific system from a specification of its features, or configuration of a generic system in order to restrict it to the desired set of features.

In this seminar we will study the notion of variability in software systems and techniques for realization of variability, by reading and discussing key papers about the various aspects of variability management.

Participants are expected to read all papers before sessions and to give presentations about several of the papers.