Software Reuse and Mass Customisation Feature Modelling vs. Case-based Reasoning

Several socio-economic trends are driving customer demands towards individualisation. Many suppliers are responding by offering supplier-led software product design customization choices ("mass customization"). Some are also offering customer-led software product design choices ("mass personalization"). This tutorial introduces these concepts and explores the implications for software product line development. One particular technical challenge is being able to respond to and manage at scale the increasing variety of common, supplier-led and customer-led features. We discuss two different approaches to address this challenge. One is grounded in feature modelling; the other in case-based reasoning. Both approaches aim to support the identification and selection of similar products. However they each place different emphases on these activities, use different product descriptions, and deploy different product derivation methods. Accordingly, each approach has different key properties, benefits and limitations.