Jan Bredereke

• The feature interaction problem in telecommunications systems increasingly obstructsthe evolution of such systems. We develop formal detection criteria which render anecessary (but less than sufficient) condition for feature interactions. It can be checkedmechanically and points out all potentially critical spots. These have to be analyzedmanually. The resulting resolution decisions are incorporated formally. Some prototypetool support is already available. A prerequisite for formal criteria is a formal definitionof the problem. Since the notions of feature and feature interaction are often used in arather fuzzy way, we attempt a formal definition first and discuss which aspects can beincluded in a formalization (and therefore in a detection method). This paper describeson-going work.