Customization is a general trend in software engineering, demanding systems that support
variable stakeholder requirements. Two opposing strategies are commonly used to create
variants: software clone&own and software configuration with an integrated platform.
Organizations often start with the former, which is cheap, agile, and supports quick
innovation, but does not scale. The latter scales by establishing an integrated platform that
shares software assets between variants, but requires high up-front investments or risky …

… We design, formalize, and prototype the variability-management framework virtual
platform. It bridges the gap between clone&own and platform-oriented development by
introducing governance levels … Additionally, an online appendix with a technical report
about our operators, additional examples, and evaluation data can be found online [Vi21a]. …