pure::variants and IBM Engineering Global Configuration Management (GCM) both offer configuration management capabilities, but they serve slightly different purposes and offer distinct features. This brief blog post discusses the differences between IBM GCM and pure::variants as well as the benefits of using them together.
- Feature Modeling and Variability Management:
- pure::variants specializes in feature modeling and variability management, enabling organizations to manage product lines with multiple variants. It allows you to define a set of core features and optional variants, making it easier to create customized products by selecting different combinations of features.
- IBM Engineering GCM focuses more on managing configurations of artifacts across different tools and disciplines, rather than explicitly managing feature variability in product lines.
2. Product Line Engineering (PLE):
- pure::variants is designed specifically for Product Line Engineering (PLE), helping organizations manage and reuse assets across multiple product variants. It provides tools to define, manage, and derive product variants, enabling efficient product line management.
- IBM Engineering GCM supports configuration management across a wide range of artifacts but does not provide the same level of support for PLE and variant management as pure::variants.
3. Integration with Other Tools:
- pure::variants integrates with a wide range of tools for requirements management, design, and testing, offering a more seamless experience for managing variants across different stages of the product lifecycle.
- IBM Engineering GCM integrates deeply with other IBM tools like DOORS Next, Rhapsody, and Workflow, but its primary focus is on managing configurations across these tools rather than on managing product variants.
4. Automated Variant Derivation:
- pure::variants offers automated derivation of product variants based on the feature model, significantly reducing the time and effort needed to create customized versions of a product.
- IBM Engineering GCM does not offer complete automated variant derivation; it is more focused on managing different configurations and baselines of artifacts. GCM can provide much of the needed variant derivation but requires more manual work.
5. Visualization of Variability:
- pure::variants provides advanced visualization tools to help users understand and manage the variability within their product lines, including feature trees and decision models.
- IBM Engineering GCM provides visualization for configurations and baselines but does not focus on visualizing feature variability in the same way.
6. Scalability for Large Product Lines:
- pure::variants is designed to scale for large product lines with complex variability, making it suitable for industries like automotive and aerospace where managing hundreds or thousands of variants is common.
- IBM Engineering GCM is scalable for managing configurations across large teams and projects.
The Synergy of pure::variants and IBM GCM
The IBM Engineering platform offers robust features for componentizing engineering artifacts throughout the lifecycle and managing their change and configuration. It also enables efficient reuse of these artifacts, both locally and globally. These capabilities are integrated into the IBM Global Configuration Management (GCM) services.s.
pure::variants offers a powerful method for modeling the features and variants of a product line. It integrates seamlessly with the IBM Engineering platform, enabling requirements, models, and tests to be mapped to those features and variant models. With robust automation, new variants can be quickly and easily generated, whether for a single domain (such as requirements) or for an entire product.
These two products work synergistically. pure::variants enables the creation of a feature model and identifies, within a variant model, the specific parts of the feature model to include in each variant. GCM defines the product architecture and the contents of its components. pure::variants then uses the variant model to determine which component artifacts to include when creating a variant branch with GCM operations. This entire process is automated by pure::variants.
Product Lifecycle Management variants can be built using IBM Engineering solutions and GCM alone, but by incorporating pure::variants, the effort required is reduced by more than half..
In summary, pure::variants offers specialized capabilities for managing product line variability, feature modeling, and automated variant derivation, which go beyond the robust configuration management capabilities provided by IBM Engineering Global Configuration Management. The value of combining IBM GCM and pure::variants is significantly greater than the sum of their parts.