reference

Agile Software Development

Be ingenious

Customer: Automotive OEM

Market: Heavy duty on highway – North American & European market

BRACE execution: Process Competence Cluster

Location: Customer offices

In the world of automotive software the time-to-market for new software is getting ever shorter, while the complexity of the product is rapidly increasing. The challenge is to provide the highest business value in the shortest time in combination with legislation demands as well as market requests for incorporating standards such as Automotive SPICE and Functional Safety (ISO 26262).

By incorporating an agile methodology, like scrum, into a classic “V-model” process layout, the awareness to deliver functionality with the highest business value increases as well as the accuracy of the planning. The introduction was performed gradually; starting with one team and build up to a complete department within a year, containing the following aspects of scrum and kanban:

Roles (Product owner, scrum master, team stakeholders)
Meetings (Daily, sprint planning, retrospective)
Artifacts (Product backlog, sprint backlog, burn down)
Limiting of work in progress
Managing of the workflow

Not all aspects of scrum where incorporated because not all of them had the expected result in this environment (demonstration) or where implemented in another way (backlog grooming) focusing on achieving the highest result possible.

The main achievements after the introduction of scrum are:

Increased team productivity
Continuous improvement of the processes, workflows and tool chains
More realistic plans
Increased trust within the organization

other references

about BRACE automotive

BRACE automotive engineers are “passionate about technology”. We develop and engineer automotive systems and components for OEM vehicle manufacturers, 1st and 2nd Tier suppliers and other niche organizations. Our main disciplines are organized in vehicle systems, embedded controls and software, mechanical design and development, and specific competence clusters.