Protocol for a Systematic Mapping Study on Collaborative Model-Driven Software Engineering

Nowadays, collaborative modeling performed by multiple stakeholders is gaining a growing interest in both academia and practice. However, it poses a set of research challenges, such as large and complex models management, support for multi-user modeling environments, and synchronization mechanisms like models migration and merging, conflicts management, models versioning and rollback support. A body of knowledge in the scientific literature about collaborative model-driven software engineering (MDSE) exists. Still, those studies are scattered across different independent research areas, such as software engineering, model-driven engineering languages and systems, model integrated computing, etc., and a study classifying and comparing the various approaches and methods for collaborative MDSE is still missing. Under this perspective, a systematic mapping study (SMS) can help researchers and practitioners in (i) having a complete, comprehensive and valid picture of the state of the art about collaborative MDSE, and (ii) identifying potential gaps in current research and future research directions.