Continental’s venture into corporate venture capital: how startup investments may help a large automative incumbent to deal with disruptive transformations in the auto space

After years of stable growth, Continental AG (Conti), one of the world’s largest automotive tier one suppliers, has released its second profit warning in 2018 and shareholders lost over $20 bn within only ten months. Conti finds itself confronted with significant underperformance in key markets, staggering growth in its core business and increasing competition from new (tech) players aggressively pushing into the auto space. And Conti’s situation is not unique: The automotive industry is on the edge of disruption, as the vehicle’s value proposition shifts away from individual car ownership to consumption of on-demand and shared mobility services strongly impacting traditional sales growth. The vehicle slowly turns into a commodity platform for services, making software the new differentiating factor while commoditizing tier ones’ traditional core businesses around hardware. To manage these challenges and preserve its leading role in the mobility sector, in 2018, Conti has released its so-called Future Mobility strategy, announcing the greatest restructuring in corporate history as well as a large open innovation campaign. One of the key elements is the foundation of a dedicated corporate venture capital unit (CVC) with the aim to effectively tap into innovation and capitalize on new opportunities faster. Starting off with a small CVC team, the company is now faced with the critical question of choosing the adequate organizational setup of the CVC practice. Considering the company’s current financial situation, complex and fragmented organizational structure, competitive landscape and future aspirations, deciding on its setup represents a very delicate task. The unit’s organizational setup and operating model must be chosen carefully in accordance with the company’s overarching strategic ambitions and potential areas of internal conflict

DevOps for Digital Leaders

DevOps; continuous delivery; software lifecycle; concurrent parallel testing; service management; ITIL; GRC; PaaS; containerization; API management; lean principles; technical debt; end-to-end automation; automatio

Estudio investigación acción - Definición de marco de trabajo empleando metodologías ágiles para la configuración de herramientas tecnológicas y su aplicación en proyectos de desarrollo de software para una empresa aseguradora

El presente trabajo describe la revisión sistemática realizada sobre el uso correcto de las metodologías ágiles y herramientas para proyectos de desarrollo de software dependiendo de las complejidades que se presente. Se inicia con una breve descripción del problema que se busca resolver para la cual se realiza la revisión sistemática. Este problema principalmente es la ausencia de un marco de trabajo que facilite a la organización y guíe con este el uso correcto de las metodologías ágiles y herramientas tecnológicas aplicadas a proyectos de desarrollo de software. Con esto se pretende ayudar a usuarios antes de la construcción del software; es decir que le facilite identificar la complejidad del proyecto que desea implementar y con eso pueda escoger una metodología, herramientas o técnicas para usarlas en la ejecución de su proyecto. Luego de especifica el método de revisión de literatura a emplear la cual será principalmente una revisión sistemática en múltiples bases de datos de artículos como Scopus o IEEE usando el método PICOC como se describe en dicha sección. Luego estos artículos encontrados se filtran utilizando criterios de inclusión y exclusión como el año de publicación o el contenido del artículo. Finalmente, una vez seleccionados los artículos relevantes se procede a responder a las preguntas de investigación planteadas durante la aplicación del método PICOC. En este caso se consideraron 4 preguntas que fueron respondidas utilizando todos los artículos relevantes.Trabajo de investigació

SOFTENG 2023: the ninth international conference on advances and trends in software engineering

The Ninth International Conference on Advances and Trends in Software Engineering (SOFTENG 2023), held between April 24th and April 28th, 2023, continued a series of events focusing on these challenging aspects for software development and deployment, across the whole life-cycle. Software engineering exhibits challenging dimensions in the light of new applications, devices, and services. Mobility, user-centric development, smart-devices, e-services, ambient environments, e-health and wearable/implantable devices pose specific challenges for specifying software requirements and developing reliable and safe software. Specific software interfaces, agile organization and software dependability require particular approaches for software security, maintainability, and sustainability. We take here the opportunity to warmly thank all the members of the SOFTENG 2023 technical program committee, as well as all the reviewers. The creation of such a high-quality conference program would not have been possible without their involvement. We also kindly thank all the authors who dedicated much of their time and effort to contribute to SOFTENG 2023. We truly believe that, thanks to all these efforts, the final conference program consisted of top-quality contributions. We also thank the members of the SOFTENG 2023 organizing committee for their help in handling the logistics of this event. We hope that SOFTENG 2023 was a successful international forum for the exchange of ideas and results between academia and industry and for the promotion of progress in the field of software engineering

Health and usage monitoring system for military vehicles

© Cranfield University, 2019The aircraft industry has been able to adopt improved maintenance and logistics planning as a result of the technological advances in Integrated Modular Avionics (IMA) and Equipment Health Monitoring (EHM). Same cannot be said about the land system. In the land environment, military vehicles are well behind in achieving the same abilities and hence, the problem of inefficiency in the maintenance and logistics for land based system needs to be addressed. To address this and assess the viability of integrating HUMS and Autonomic Logistics on military land vehicles, this project was proposed. Three main contributions from this research which adds to the knowledge are: (1) assessment of some real system failure which could lead to a poor operational readiness, (2) evaluation of how HUMS can improve the availability and operational readiness and reduction in maintenance cost that leads to the development of cost model and (3) a use of case studies to evaluate degradation of systems under consideration and how their continuous monitoring can help reduce the maintenance cost. A cost modelling study presented a simple and effective method to analyse the financial implication of integrating HUMS system was proposed for military land vehicles. The model provides logical steps to estimate the yearly repair costs, operational availability and the overall costs to understand the financial implication of HUMS integration over the whole service life. The model was also used to assess the financial viability of integrating HUMS in other military platforms e.g. light armoured vehicle, Piranha and Main Battle Tank, Challenger 2. In both the cases, the analysis showed significant financial savings in the long term. A case study was conducted on two different military vehicles to identify the frequency of different systems and sub-systems failures. The 20 challenger 2 and 40 Piranha were studied over the period of 10 years of service time. Study has found that cooling-, lubrication- and the suspension- system were the mostly affected systems in those particular vehicles. An experimental protocol was developed to study the failure detection techniques for the suspension system. The frequency response function was used to identify the failure of the damper and hence the suspension system. The study has observed the changes in the resonance frequency of the failed suspension system with different excitation magnitudes. Effect of vibration waveform was observed to be negligible. However, the small changes in the resonance frequencies using different magnitudes of base excitation seems to suggest the excitation magnitude has the potential to identify the failure based on the frequency response function.Another experimental protocol was developed to examine the failure detection technique for the cooling system of the military vehicle. When the failure was introduced to the cooling system, the significant variations in the temperature were observed for all the engine running conditions at the lab as well as the test with the vehicle running in the field. The variations observed in the temperature measured in different locations in the cooling system could be used to diagnose an early stage of failure in the cooling system, and it can be used to take a preventive action before the actual failure occurs

Abordagem híbrida de gestão de projetos para programas de I&D em colaboração universidade-indústria

Dissertação de mestrado em Gestão de Projetos de EngenhariaO número de colaborações entre universidades e indústria em projetos de investigação e desenvolvimento (I&D) tem vindo a aumentar nos últimos anos, o que deriva do reconhecimento da relevância das parcerias para o sucesso futuro, quer para cada uma das entidades, quer para a economia nacional. A colaboração universidade-indústria tem sido encorajada pelo governo, salientando-se os benefícios disponibilizados às entidades envolvidas, com vista ao crescimento nacional. Desta forma, muitas das colaborações em projetos de I&D têm sido apoiadas financeiramente pelo governo e União Europeia (UE), o que aumenta a responsabilidade das entidades parceiras na consecução dos objetivos previstos e contratualizados. A gestão desta tipologia de projetos é um desafio, pois a natureza intrínseca das entidades parceiras é diferente, apresentando objetivos de curto, médio e longo prazo substancialmente distintos. Embora a literatura forneça alguns conselhos sobre a gestão de programas e projetos em geral, comparativamente, o contexto específico da colaboração universidade-indústria não tem sido tão explorado, exigindo um forte esforço de investigação para produzir diretrizes eficazes. Na sequência deste esforço, o presente trabalho de investigação tem como objetivo dar resposta à pergunta de investigação: Quais as melhores práticas de Gestão de Projetos a adotar nos projetos de I&D em Colaboração Universidade-Indústria financiados por uma entidade pública? Assim, pretende-se disponibilizar aos stakeholders envolvidos em iniciativas de projetos de I&D em colaboração entre universidades e indústrias, uma abordagem híbrida de gestão de projetos (GP), que apresenta um conjunto de práticas-chave de GP distintas direcionadas para este contexto específico. Por norma, as iniciativas de I&D em colaboração universidade-indústria são organizadas como programas, constituídos por um conjunto de projetos relacionados. Através de uma investigação exploratória, foi desenvolvida uma abordagem híbrida de GP com base na estratégia de investigação: estudo de caso. Durante a análise do estudo de caso, foram aplicados quatro métodos de investigação: análise documental, observação, entrevistas não-estruturadas e semiestruturadas. Os três primeiros métodos foram utilizados para a primeira abordagem de conceituação que foi a base para se chegar à conceptualização final (abordagem híbrida de GP) e assim responder à pergunta de investigação. A abordagem híbrida de GP identifica um conjunto de 29 práticas de GP Must Have, que devem ser comuns a todos os projetos do programa, uma vez que a governança do programa tem de ser assegurada. Além disso, identifica três conjuntos diferentes de práticas de GP Nice to Have, que são opcionais e dependem do contexto específico do projeto e da abordagem de GP adotada por cada equipa de projeto: waterfall ou agile. Dentro do conjunto Nice to Have foram identificadas 2 práticas somente waterfall, 12 agile e 16 práticas que podem ser adaptadas para ambas as abordagens de gestão. A conceptualização da abordagem híbrida é, no seu global, constituída por 59 práticas de GP. A principal contribuição para a prática é a própria conceptualização final, resultado do trabalho de investigação. A principal contribuição para a teoria é que esta investigação fornece mais conhecimento sobre práticas de GP num contexto específico, para o qual a literatura existente é limitada.The number of collaborations between universities and industry in research and development projects has been increasing in recent years, which stems from the recognition of the relevance of the partnerships for future success, either for each entity or for the national economy. The university-industry collaboration has been encouraged by the government, emphasizing the benefits available to the entities involved, in order to foster the national growth. Thus, many of the collaborations in R&D projects have been financially supported by the government and the European Union (EU), which increases the responsibility of the partner entities to achieve the planned and contracted objectives. The management of this type of project is a challenge, since the intrinsic nature of the partner entities is different, presenting substantially different short, medium and long-term objectives. Although the literature provides some advice on program and project management in general, comparatively, the specific context of university-industry collaboration has not been much explored, requiring a strong research effort to produce effective guidelines. Following this effort, this research work aims to answer the research question: What are the best Project Management practices to be adopted in University-Industry Collaboration R&D funded projects? So, it is intended to make available to the stakeholders involved in R&D project initiatives in collaboration between universities and industries, a hybrid approach to project management, which presents a set of different PM practices directed towards this specific context. Usually, R&D initiatives in university-industry collaboration are organized as programs, consisting of a set of related projects. Through an exploratory investigation, a hybrid PM approach was developed based on a case study research strategy. During the analysis of the case study, four research methods were applied: documentary analysis, observation, unstructured and semi-structured interviews. The first three methods were used for the first conceptualization approach that was the basis for arriving at the final conception (hybrid PM approach) and thus answering the research question. The hybrid PM approach identifies a set of 29 PM Must Have practices, which should be common to all program projects, since program governance has to be ensured. In addition, it identifies three different sets of PM Nice to Have practices, which are optional and depend on the specific project context and PM approach adopted by each project team: waterfall or agile. Within the Nice to Have set were identified: 2 practices only waterfall, 12 agile and 16 practices that can be adapted to both management approaches. The conceptualization of the hybrid approach comprises, in its entirety, 59 PM practices. The main contribution to practice is the very final conceptualization of the research work. The main contribution to the theory is that this research provides more knowledge about GP practices in a specific context, for which the existing literature is limited