Evaluating Bug-Fixing in Software Product Lines: an Industrial Case Study

[Background] Bug-fixing could be complex in industrial practice since thousands of products share features in their configuration. Despite the importance and complexity of bug-fixing, there is still a lack of empirical data about the difficulties found in industrial Software Product Lines (SPLs). [Aims] This paper aims to evaluate engineers' performance fixing errors and propagating the fixes to other configured products in the context of an industrial SPL. [Method] We designed and conducted an empirical study to collect data with regard to bug-fixing tasks within the context of a Induction Hob SPL in the BSH group, the largest manufacturer of home appliances in Europe. [Results] We found that effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction got reached good values. Through interviews we also found difficulties related to unused features, cloning features unintentionally, detecting modified features, and propagating the fix when the source of the bug is the interaction between features. [Conclusions] The identified difficulties are relevant to know how to better apply SPLs in industry in the future.