Measuring the Coherence of Software Product Line Architectures

One of the promising approaches to software development is the concept of Product Line Architectures, or PLAs: architectural frameworks for developing software applications for a series of related products. Assessment of software PLAs and their measurement is still a largely undeveloped territory, where main emphasis is put on the experience and insight of individual designers, rather than on some more objective measure. We propose the coherence measure as a vehicle to increase the designers’ understanding of the quality of PLAs, and to give valuable insight into the possible modifications of the PLA in order to increase its conceptual quality.