Stakeholder identification for a structured release planning approach in the automotive domain

TL;DR

This paper identifies key stakeholders involved in automotive release planning to enhance transparency and manage complexity in regulated, hybrid development environments using action research at Porsche.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive stakeholder model for automotive release planning, integrating hardware and software perspectives, based on empirical action research.

Findings

Stakeholders involved in release planning are diverse and interconnected.

Identified stakeholders provide essential content and value for effective planning.

The stakeholder model improves transparency and complexity management in automotive projects.

Abstract

Context: In regulated domains like automotive, release planning is a complex process. The agreement between traditional product development processes for hardware as well as mechanic systems and agile development approaches for software development is a major challenge. Especially the creation and synchronization of a release plan is challenging. Objective: The aim of this work is to present identified stakeholders of a release plan as an appropriate approach to create transparency in release planning in the automotive domain. Method: Action research to elaborate relevant stakeholders for release planning was conducted at Dr. Ing. h. c. F. Porsche AG. Results: We present a detailed overview of identified stakeholders due to release planning as well as their required content and added value regarding to two pilot projects. The results confirm the fact that almost every stakeholder is involved in a release plan in a certain way. Conclusions: Release planning within a complex project environment and complicated customer constellations is difficult to manage. We discuss how the presented stakeholders could meet with the given conditions in the automotive domain. With this contribution, identified stakeholders of release planning from hardware and software point of view is introduced. It helps to reach transparency and to handle the given complexity.