Staged configuration through specialization and multilevel configuration of feature models

Feature modeling is a key technique for capturing commonalities and
variabilities in system families and product lines. In this article,
we propose a cardinality-based notation for feature modeling, which
integrates a number of existing extensions of previous approaches. We
then introduce and motivate the novel concept of staged configuration.
Staged configuration can be achieved by the stepwise specialization of
feature models or by multilevel configuration, where the configuration
choices available in each stage are defined by separate feature
models. Staged configuration is important because, in a realistic
development process, different groups and different people make
product configuration choices in different stages. Finally, we also
discuss how multilevel configuration avoids a breakdown between the
different abstraction levels of individual features. This problem,
sometimes referred to as ’analysis paralysis’, easily occurs in
feature modeling because features can denote entities at arbitrary
levels of abstraction within a system family.