Impediments to Introducing Continuous Integration for Model-Based Development in Industry

Model-based development and continuous integration each separately are methods to improve the productivity of development of complex modern software systems. We investigate industrial adoption of these two phenomena in combination, i.e., applying continuous integration practices in model-based development projects. Through semi-structured interviews, eleven engineers at three companies with different modelling practices share their views on perceived and experienced impediments to this adoption. We find some cases in which this introduction is undesired and expected to not be beneficial. For other cases, we find and categorize several impediments and discuss how they are dealt with in industrial practice. Model synchronization and tool interoperability are found the most challenging to overcome and the ways in which they are circumvented in g to overcome and the ways in which they are circumvented in practice are detrimental for introducing continuous integration