SEKE 2012 Proceedings - Knowledge Systems Institute

Synthesizing Evidence on Risk Management: A
Narrative Synthesis of two Mapping Studies
Luanna Lopes Lobato 1,2 , Ivan do Carmo Machado 3 , Paulo Anselmo da Mota Silveira Neto 1 ,
Eduardo Santana de Almeida 3 , Silvio Romero de Lemos Meira 1
1 Informatics Center. Federal University of Pernambuco. Recife – PE. Brazil
2 Computer Science Department. Federal University of Goiás. Catalão – GO. Brazil
3 Computer Science Department. Federal University of Bahia. Salvador – BA. Brazil
{lll,pamsn,srlm}@cin.ufpe.br, {ivanmachado,esa}@dcc.ufba.br
Abstract—Software Product Lines (SPL) Engineering is an
effective development paradigm for systematic software reuse. It
is focused on improving software practices, leading companies to
experience a series of benefits, such as: reduction in both time-tomarket
and overall development effort, as well as improvements
in terms of quality for the products delivered to customers.
However, establishing an SPL is not a simple task, and may affect
several aspects of an organization. Moreover, it indeed involves
significant investment if compared to Single System Development
(SSD). As a consequence, a greater set of risks is involved with
SPL adoption, which can impact the project success if they are
not well managed and appropriate RM activities are not applied.
In this context, this paper presents an evidence analysis about
RM in both fields, SPL and SSD. Outcomes from several
published studies were analyzed, by means of systematic
mapping studies, and hence compared in order to highlight the
common and different findings among them. In addition, the
studies were analyzed in order to present their contributions and
the methods used to perform the research.
Software Product Lines; Single System Development; Risk
Management; Evidence-Based Software Engineering; Narrative
Synthesis.
I. INTRODUCTION
SPL Engineering is based on a set of systems sharing a
common, managed suite of features that satisfy the specific
needs of a particular market or mission. Products in an SPL are
developed from a co mmon set of core assets in a prescribed
way [1]. Such a development strategy, based on systematic
software reuse, is aimed at achieving large-scale software
production and customization, reduced time to market,
improved quality and minimized costs [2].
Despite the benefits of the SPL adoption, challenges and
problems may be faced, since it demands mature and
systematic practices. The SPL development consists of a threelevel
process, namely Core Assets Development (CAD),
Product Development (PD) and Management (M) [3]. In the
prior, highly reusable core assets are developed, that will be
assembled in PD to build the planned and expected products.
Management is an o rthogonal activity, performed in order to
coordinate the whole SPL, thus encompassing both CAD and
PD issues [3].
Establishing an SPL is not a simple task, which might
affect several aspects of an o rganization. In this context, risk
management policies should be set down, and communicated
throughout the SPL development life cycle, since these can
affect the project success in all of its phases [4].
Risk Management (RM) in SPL has gained attention from
the research community, but it is still considered as an open
field for investigation, especially in terms of moving research
to industry practices, unlike traditional software development,
i.e., single systems development (SSD), which contains a
relevant set of reported evidences.
In this scenario, this investigation is aimed at discussing the
RM field, on the basis of a comprehensive analysis of common
issues reported for both SPL and SSD. We are interested in
verifying likely gaps in the field of RM, in order to provide
practitioners with a set of open rooms for improving the RM
practices in SPL development.
Findings from two empirical studies [5] serve as a basis for
this work. Such studies, performed as literature reviews on
software risk approaches, in respectively SSD and SPL,
sketched the state-of-the-art in RM in the both fields. They
followed the systematic mapping study methodology [6]. An
initial discussion on these findings was performed in a previous
work [7], a short paper in which a comparison of outcomes is
run. In such a st udy we described and synthesized the risks
identified in the both literature reviews, by applying the
narrative synthesis methodology.
In this work, an extension of [7], the synthesis was
performed based on the guidelines provided by Rodgers et al.
[8] and some experiences described by Cruzes and Dybå [9].
We also followed the lessons learned presented by Mills et al.
[10] about the analysis of different syntheses.
The remainder of this paper is structured as f ollows.
Section II describes the related work. Section III discusses the
comparative analysis about the findings identified. In Section
IV the limitations and threats are presented. Finally, Section V
concludes this work and outlines future work.
II. RELATED WORK
Besides our initial comparative analysis [7], there are no
studies that focus the comparison between RM to SPL and
SSD. Hence, as far as we know, our research is the initial effort
devoted reported towards understanding, based on comparing
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