PuLSE: a methodology to develop software product lines
SSR '99 Proceedings of the 1999 symposium on Software reusability
Qualitative Methods in Empirical Studies of Software Engineering
IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering
Software architecture for product families: principles and practice
Software architecture for product families: principles and practice
Managing variability in software architectures
SSR '01 Proceedings of the 2001 symposium on Software reusability: putting software reuse in context
Software product lines: practices and patterns
Software product lines: practices and patterns
Variability Issues in Software Product Lines
PFE '01 Revised Papers from the 4th International Workshop on Software Product-Family Engineering
Software Architecture in Practice
Software Architecture in Practice
The Impact of Maintainability on Component-based Software Systems
EUROMICRO '03 Proceedings of the 29th Conference on EUROMICRO
Using the Focus Group Method in Software Engineering: Obtaining Practitioner and User Experiences
ISESE '04 Proceedings of the 2004 International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering
Five years of product line engineering in a small company
Proceedings of the 27th international conference on Software engineering
A taxonomy of variability realization techniques: Research Articles
Software—Practice & Experience
Software Product Line Engineering: Foundations, Principles and Techniques
Software Product Line Engineering: Foundations, Principles and Techniques
Sparking Research Ideas from the Friction Between Doctrine and Reality
WICSA '05 Proceedings of the 5th Working IEEE/IFIP Conference on Software Architecture
Classifying variability modeling techniques
Information and Software Technology
The software product line architecture: An empirical investigation of key process activities
Information and Software Technology
The Concept of Reference Architectures
Systems Engineering
Variability management in software product lines: a systematic review
Proceedings of the 13th International Software Product Line Conference
Proceedings of the Fourth European Conference on Software Architecture: Companion Volume
SPLC'10 Proceedings of the 14th international conference on Software product lines: going beyond
Impact evaluation for quality-oriented architectural decisions regarding evolvability
ECSA'10 Proceedings of the 4th European conference on Software architecture
A status report on the evaluation of variability management approaches
EASE'09 Proceedings of the 13th international conference on Evaluation and Assessment in Software Engineering
Proceedings of the 5th European Conference on Software Architecture: Companion Volume
Second international workshop on variability in software architecture
Proceedings of the WICSA/ECSA 2012 Companion Volume
Variability viewpoint for introducing variability in software architecture viewpoints
Proceedings of the WICSA/ECSA 2012 Companion Volume
Design for Reuse in Business Process: Method and Experiments
International Journal of Enterprise Information Systems
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Context: In the software product line domain, the concept of variability is well recognized. However, variability in the context of software architecture still seems to be poorly understood. Objective: In this paper, we aim at contributing to the development of a basic understanding of the notion of variability in the software architecture domain, beyond the idea of product lines. Method: We perform a preliminary exploratory study which consists of two parts: an expert survey among 11 subjects, and a mini focus group with 4 participants. For both parts, we collect and analyze mostly qualitative data. Results: Our observations indicate that there seems to be no common understanding of "variability" in the context of software architecture. On the other hand, some challenges related to variability in software architecture are similar to challenges identified in the product line domain. Conclusions: Variability in software architecture might require more theoretical foundations in order to establish "variability" as an architectural key concept and first-class quality attribute.