A systematic review of evaluation of variability management approaches in software product lines

The findings from this systematic review show that a large majority of the reported VM approaches have not been sufficiently evaluated using scientifically rigorous methods. The available evidence is sparse and the quality of the presented evidence is quite low. The findings highlight the areas in need of improvement, i.e., rigorous evaluation of VM approaches. However, the reported evidence is quite consistent across different studies. That means the proposed approaches may be very beneficial when they are applied properly in appropriate situations. Hence, it can be concluded that further investigations need to pay more attention to the contexts under which different approaches can be more beneficial.