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US 2016/0078384 A1Published application
Feature Bundles in Multistage Configuration Trees
AssigneeBigLever Software, Inc.
InventorsCharles W. Krueger, Drew Stovall
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A product line engineering (PLE) multistage configuration tree that supports the engineering, deployment and maintenance of complex product family trees is provided. Feature bundles which combine a group of feature decisions into a single bundled offering are inherited by the children of the node in the product family tree where they are defined. The children see only the smaller collection of bundled offerings rather than all the possible combinations of the multiple feature offerings that are encapsulated by the feature bundle.
Claims6
A product line management system comprising:
- a product family tree computer data structure, wherein each node defines a subfamily and each parent node of the product family tree has one or more feature profiles;
- wherein at least one of the one or more feature profiles are partially bound feature profiles having some feature decisions that have been made and some feature decisions that have not been made;
- one or more feature profiles within the parent node are collected into a view, wherein only a limited combination of feature decisions in the parent node are explicitly included in the view, thereby creating a feature bundle;
- and
- one or more child nodes in the product family tree, wherein the one or more child nodes must inherit, must honor, and may not override feature decisions in the feature bundle, regardless of the feature decisions available at the parent node;
- and
- wherein creation and modification of the product family tree computer data structure is performed using at least one computing device.
4 more elements
A method comprising:
- receiving a selection or downselection decision at a profile on a node of a product family tree, wherein each node defines a subfamily and each parent node of the product family tree has one or more feature profiles, at least one of which is a partially bound feature profile having some feature decisions that have been made and some feature decisions that have not been made;
- collecting one or more feature profiles within the parent node into a view, wherein only a limited combination of feature decisions in the parent node are explicitly included in the view, thereby creating a feature bundle;
- downselecting the feature bundle to the child node, thereby constraining the space of available choices by excluding sonic decisions from further consideration, wherein the creation and modification of the product family tree computer data structure is performed with at least one computing device.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.