Forces that support agile adoption in the automotive domain

The ability to develop and deploy high-quality software at a high speed gets increasing relevance for the comptetitiveness of car manufacturers. Agile practices have shown benefits such as faster time to market in several application domains. Therefore, it seems to be promising to carefully adopt agile practices also in the automotive domain. This article presents findings from an interview-based qualitative survey. It aims at understanding perceived forces that support agile adoption. Particularly, it focuses on embedded software development for electronic control units in the automotive domain

Should I stay or should I go? : On forces that drive and prevent MBSE adoption in the embedded systems industry

[Context] Model-based Systems Engineering (MBSE) comprises a set of models and techniques that is often suggested as solution to cope with the challenges of engineering complex systems. Although many practitioners agree with the arguments on the potential benefits of the techniques, companies struggle with the adoption of MBSE. [Goal] In this paper, we investigate the forces that prevent or impede the adoption of MBSE in companies that develop embedded software systems. We contrast the hindering forces with issues and challenges that drive these companies towards introducing MBSE. [Method] Our results are based on 20 interviews with experts from 10 companies. Through exploratory research, we analyze the results by means of thematic coding. [Results] Forces that prevent MBSE adoption mainly relate to immature tooling, uncertainty about the return-on-investment, and fears on migrating existing data and processes. On the other hand, MBSE adoption also has strong drivers and participants have high expectations mainly with respect to managing complexity, adhering to new regulations, and reducing costs. [Conclusions] We conclude that bad experiences and frustration about MBSE adoption originate from false or too high expectations. Nevertheless, companies should not underestimate the necessary efforts for convincing employees and addressing their anxiety

System Capability Feedback-Cycles in Automotive Software Development

Context: The automotive industry is currently going through rapid change, driven by new technology; for example, electrification, autonomous driving, and connected cars. This new technology is largely based on electronics and software, and vehicles are increasingly becoming software-intensive systems. This affects how vehicles are developed, as automotive companies seek to adopt processes used in development of software-only systems, to gain the benefits of development speed and quick learning cycles possible in software development. Where sequential processes were previously the norm, automotive companies now aim to use agile methods at company-scale. Given the safety-critical nature of vehicles, and the mix software, hardware, and mechanical parts, this is challenging.Objective: This thesis explores how system-level feedback capabilities can be achieved in development of automotive systems.Method: To investigate a real-world setting, empirical methods are a natural choice. As an overarching research strategy, field studies are conducted at automotive companies. Over four studies, qualitative data is collected through semi-structured and structured interviews, focus groups, and workshops. The data is analyzed using adaptable methods, such as thematic coding. These qualitative approaches allow for open-ended questions, which are suitable for exploratory research.Findings: Transitioning towards agility changes the role of architecture, requirements, and in general of system-level artifacts previously finalized during early development phases. Nevertheless, what is covered by architecture and requirements still needs to be handled. They contain accumulated expertise, and fundamental concerns, such as safety, remain. However, automotive companies need to handle an increased importance of software for new feature development. Continuing business-as-usual is not an option.Conclusion: To achieve feedback capabilities on the system-level, there is a need for tools and methods allowing artifacts on higher levels of abstraction, for example architecture descriptions and requirements, to be modified and evolve over the entire course of development

The Impact of Requirements on Systems Development Speed: A Multiple-Case Study in Automotive

Automotive\ua0manufacturers have historically adopted rigid\ua0requirements\ua0engineering processes. This allowed them to meet safety-critical\ua0requirements\ua0when producing\ua0a\ua0highly complex and differentiated product out of the integration of thousands of physical and software components. Nowadays, few software-related domains are as rapidly changing as the\ua0automotive\ua0industry.\ua0In\ua0particular, the needs of improving\ua0development\ua0speed\ua0are increasingly pushing companies\ua0in\ua0this domain toward new ways of developing software.\ua0In\ua0this paper, we investigate how the goal to increase\ua0development\ua0speed\ua0impacts how\ua0requirements\ua0are managed\ua0in\ua0the\ua0automotive\ua0domain. We start from\ua0a\ua0manager perspective, which we then complement with\ua0a\ua0more general perspective. We used\ua0a\ua0qualitative\ua0multiple-case\ua0study, organized\ua0in\ua0two steps.\ua0In\ua0the first step, we had 20 semi-structured interviews, at two\ua0automotive\ua0manufacturers. Our sampling strategy focuses on manager roles, complemented with technical specialists.\ua0In\ua0the second step, we validated our results with 12 more interviews, covering nine additional respondents and three recurring from the first step.\ua0In\ua0addition to validating our qualitative model, the second step of interviews broadens our perspective with technical experts and change managers. Our respondents indicate and rank six aspects of the current\ua0requirements\ua0engineering approach that\ua0impact\ua0development\ua0speed. These aspects include the negative\ua0impact\ua0of\ua0a\ua0requirements\ua0style dominated by safety concerns as well as decomposition of\ua0requirements\ua0over many levels of abstraction. Furthermore, the use of\ua0requirements\ua0as part of legal contracts with suppliers is seen as hindering fast collaboration. Six additional suggestions for potential improvements include domain-specific tooling, model-based\ua0requirements, test automation, and\ua0a\ua0combination of lightweight upfront\ua0requirements\ua0engineering preceding\ua0development\ua0with precise specifications post-development. Out of these 12 aspects, seven can likely be addressed as part of an ongoing agile transformation. We offer an empirical account of expectations and needs for new\ua0requirements\ua0engineering approaches\ua0in\ua0the\ua0automotive\ua0domain, necessary to coordinate hundreds of collaborating organizations developing software-intensive and potentially safety-critical\ua0systems

Charting Coordination Needs in Large-Scale Agile Organisations with Boundary Objects and Methodological Islands

Large-scale system development companies are increasingly adopting agile methods. While this adoption may improve lead-times, such companies need to balance two trade-offs: (i) the need to have a uniform, consistent development method on system level with the need for specialised methods for teams in different disciplines (e.g., hardware, software, mechanics, sales, support); (ii) the need for comprehensive documentation on system level with the need to have lightweight documentation enabling iterative and agile work. With specialised methods for teams, isolated teams work within larger ecosystems of plan-driven culture, i.e., teams become agile “islands”. At the boundaries, these teams share knowledge which needs to be managed well for a correct system to be developed. While it is useful to support diverse and specialised methods, it is important to understand which islands are repeatedly encountered, the reasons or factors triggering their existence, and how best to handle coordination between them. Based on a multiple case study, this work presents a catalogue of islands and the boundary objects between them. We believe this work will be beneficial to practitioners aiming to understand their ecosystems and researchers addressing communication and coordination challenges in large-scale development

Human factors in developing automated vehicles: A requirements engineering perspective

Automated Vehicle (AV) technology has evolved significantly both in complexity and impact and is expected to ultimately change urban transportation. Due to this evolution, the development of AVs challenges the current state of automotive engineering practice, as automotive companies increasingly include agile ways of working in their plan-driven systems engineering—or even transition completely to scaled-agile approaches. However, it is unclear how knowledge about human factors (HF) and technological knowledge related to the development of AVs can be brought together in a way that effectively supports today\u27s rapid release cycles and agile development approaches. Based on semi-structured interviews with ten experts from industry and two experts from academia, this qualitative, exploratory case study investigates the relationship between HF and AV development. The study reveals relevant properties of agile system development and HF, as well as the implications of these properties for integrating agile work, HF, and requirements engineering. According to the findings, which were evaluated in a workshop with experts from academia and industry, a culture that values HF knowledge in engineering is key. These results promise to improve the integration of HF knowledge into agile development as well as to facilitate HF research impact and time to market

Extending the product portfolio with ‘devolved manufacturing’: Methodology and case studies

Current research by the developers of rapid prototyping systems is generally focused on improvements in cost, speed and materials to create truly economic and practical economic rapid manufacturing machines. In addition to being potentially smarter/faster/cheaper replacements for existing manufacturing technologies, the next generation of these machines will provide opportunities not only for the design and fabrication of products without traditional constraints, but also for organizing manufacturing activities in new, innovative and previously undreamt of ways. This paper outlines a novel devolved manufacturing (DM) ‘factory-less’ approach to e-manufacturing, which integrates Mass Customization (MC) concepts, Rapid Manufacturing (RM) technologies and the communication opportunities of the Internet/WWW, describes two case studies of different DM implementations and discusses the limitations and appropriateness of each, and finally, draws some conclusions about the technical, manufacturing and business challenges involved

The future of software development methods

Most of the software development methods in use today are founded on concepts that emerged in the early decades of the software industry – the systems development life cycle, object orientation, agile and lean methods, open source, software product lines, software patterns – the list goes on. However there are several disruptive elements present in the current software landscape – software ecosystems, servitization, the Internet of Things, parallel processing, cognitive computing, quantum computing – that pose significant challenges in terms of the software development methods that might be appropriate. We suggest that these disruptive elements highlight the need to create new software development methods more appropriate to the needs of the current development environment