Agile Beyond Teams and Feedback Beyond Software in Automotive Systems

TL;DR

This paper explores how automotive companies can scale agile methods beyond individual teams to improve development speed and integrate hardware, software, and mechanical components, highlighting strategies and implications.

Contribution

It provides a qualitative analysis of strategies and implications for scaling agile beyond teams in automotive, based on interviews with industry experts.

Findings

Automotive OEMs aim to decrease development lead-time.

Seven strategies support scaling agility beyond teams.

Six implications and side-effects of scaling agile are identified.

Abstract

In order to increase the ability to build complex, software-intensive systems, as well as to decrease time-to-market for new functionality, automotive companies aim to scale agile methods beyond individual teams. This is challenging, given the specifics of automotive systems that are often safety-critical and consist of software, hardware, and mechanical components. This paper investigates the concrete reasons for scaling agility beyond teams, the strategies that support such scaling, and foreseeable implications that such a drastic organizational change will entail. The investigation is based on a qualitative case study, with data from 20 semi-structured interviews with managers and technical experts at two automotive companies. At the core of our findings are observations about establishing an agile vehicle-level feedback loop beyond individual teams. (I) We find that automotive OEMs aim to decrease lead-time of development. (II) We also identify 7 strategies that aim to enable scaled-agile beyond teams. (III) Finally, we extract 6 foreseeable implications and side-effects of scaling agile beyond teams in automotive. By charting the landscape of expected benefits, strategies, and implications of scaling agile beyond teams in automotive, we enable further research and process improvements.