Conflict Resolution Strategies During Product Configuration

During product configuration, users are prone to make errors because of complexity and lack of system knowledge. Such errors cause conflicts (i.e., incompatible choices selected) and current state-of-the-art configurators require users to undo earlier decisions made or restart the decision process altogether. This paper discusses these and other conflict resolution strategies; even ones that allow users to introduce conflicts and solve them at a later time of their choosing. This is analogous to the notion of living with inconsistencies which is not only tolerated but deemed necessary in modeling. We will discuss that allowing conflicts to exist during the configuration process (living with conflicts) is likewise beneficial during the configuration process because it is easier to resolve conflicts at a later time when the user's intention is better understood (i.e., more input was provided). However, the dilemma with living with conflicts is that traditional reasoning mechanisms b...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2010
• Where: VAMOS
• Authors: Alexander Nöhrer, Alexander Egyed
• Keywords: Configuration Process, Errors Cause Conflicts, Later Time, Software Engineering, VAMOS 2010