A Conceptual Basis for Feature Engineering

C. Reid Turner † , Alfonso Fuggetta ‡, Luigi Lavazza ‡, Alexander L. Wolf †

† Department of Computer Science - University of Colorado Boulder

‡ Dipartimento di Elettronica e Informazione - Politecnico di Milano and CEFRIEL

The gulf between the user and the developer perspectives leads to difficulties in producing successful software systems. Users are focused on the problem domain, where the system's features are the primary concern. Developers are focused on the solution domain, where the system's lifecycle artifacts are key. Presently, there is little understanding of how to narrow this gulf.

This paper argues for establishing an organizing viewpoint that we term feature engineering. Feature engineering promotes features as first-class objects throughout the
software lifecycle and across the problem and solution domains. The goal of the paper
is not to propose a specific new technique or technology. Rather, it aims at laying out some basic concepts and terminology that can be used as a foundation for developing a sound and complete framework for feature engineering. The paper discusses the impact that features have on different phases of the lifecycle, provides some ideas on how these phases can be improved by fully exploiting the concept of feature, and suggests topics for a research agenda in feature engineering.