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Software evolution is characterized by inevitable changes of software and increasing software complexities, which in turn may lead to huge costs unless rigorously taking into account change accommodations. This is in particular true for long-lived systems in which changes go beyond maintainability. For such systems, there is a need to address evolvability explicitly during the entire lifecycle. Nevertheless, there is a lack of a model that can be used for analyzing, evaluating and comparing software systems in terms of evolvability. In this paper, we describe the initial establishment of an evolvability model as a framework for analysis of software evolvability. We motivate and exemplify the model through an industrial case study of a software-intensive automation system.

Evolution of software systems is characterized by inevitable changes of software and increasing software complexity, which in turn may lead to huge maintenance and development costs.  For long-lived systems, there is a need to address and maintain evolvability (i.e. a system’s ability to easily accommodate changes) during the entire lifecycle. As designing software for ease of extension and contraction depends on how well the software structure is organized, this paper explores the relationships between evolvability, modularity and inter-module dependency. Through a case study of an industrial power control and protection system, we describe our work in managing its software architecture evolution, guided by the dependency analysis at the architectural level.  The paper includes also the main analysis results, our experiences and reflections during the dependency analysis process in the case study.

Component-based software engineering (CBSE) and service-oriented software engineering (SOSE) are two of the most dominant engineering paradigms in current software community and industry. Although they have continued their development tracks in parallel and have different focus, both paradigms have similarities in many senses, which also have resulted in confusion in understanding and applying similar concepts or the same concepts designated differently. In this paper, we present a comparison analysis framework of CBSE and SOSE and analyze them from a variety of perspectives. We discuss as well the possibility of combining the strengths of the two paradigms to meet non-functional requirements.

The contribution of this paper is to clarify the characteristics of CBSE and SOSE, shorten the gap between them and bring the two worlds together so that researchers and practitioners become aware of essential issues of both paradigms, which may serve as inputs for further utilizing them in a reasonable and complementary way.

Software product line engineering has emerged as one of the dominant paradigms for developing variety of software products based on a shared platform and shared software artifacts. An important and challenging type of software maintenance and evolution is how to cost-effectively manage the migration of legacy systems towards product lines. This paper presents a structured migration method and describes our experiences in migrating industrial legacy systems into product lines. In addition, we present a number of specific recommendations for the transition process which will be of value to organizations that are considering a product line approach to their business. The recommendations cover four perspectives: business, organization, product development processes and technology.