The wind of change
About a decade ago the whole automotive industry got stirred up by the “next big thing” that would increase work effectivity, streamline processes, while making the company future proof. Not too long after we recovered from the LEAN craze of the 90s, the new world-changing way of working was already knocking on the industry’s doors. Management gurus, snake oil salesmen and money-making MBAs, all without engineering background took no time to jump on the new wave and milk it recklessly. Hyping up the old-fashioned profit-oriented CEOs with the promise of something as innovative as the first iPhone: the verdicts from the studies were clear, the numbers didn’t lie. And as some early adopters gave in to the promises, the rest didn’t want to turn into the next Nokia who totally missed the signs of the times, so they listened to the over-enthusiastic consultants.
And just like that “agile” became the buzzword of the early 2010s all around the automotive industry.
The fact that agile way of working was meant for smaller, fast paced SW companies with short feedback loops (both in the sense of organization and time), low iteration costs, and basically no regulations usually didn’t bother the advocates. Some people saw the future of agile within automotive pretty dark, but these rational voices usually were too few or just suppressed by management hubris.
The practice
Several Tier-1s and OEMs started shoehorning the agile practices into the V model and took the challenge to revolutionize the industry. PI plannings, sprint reviews, daily standups became part of our lives; we attended funky trainings where we have gotten familiar with MVPs, user stories and much more. We found ourselves following the ways of working of a startup while working for monstrous enterprises with rigid processes, conservative culture, legal certifications and a hierarchy chain that could reach the sky.
We can see now, what the critics saw in the beginning: HW, safety critical SW, and mechanics development, where the dependence on suppliers is enormous and thanks to certifications an iteration can take up more than a year is not exactly the environment that the writers of the agile manifesto had in mind.
Many managers set up to this new trend without properly understanding how agile could actually improve (or in many cases hinder) their effectivity, some even played Frankenstein and came up with a mashup of the V-model and agile and called it “Vagile” (this is not a joke, I personally heard this from one of my directors). The verdicts from studies focused on the software centered companies were loud and clear: this is the future; you are either in or out for good. In many cases this ended up in a cargo cult philosophy: we do standups and PI plannings, use scrum or Kanban boards and then magically we’ll turn into a highly profitable company with spotless customer satisfaction.
What is left
Most of the players on the automotive market already accepted that the next big thing wasn’t meant for them, but some great things stuck and without a doubt significantly improved our everyday life at work. Without the aim of completeness just a few examples: the Atlassian toolchain became the gold standard at every size, daily standups and scrum boards allow teams to track their progress accurately, and even team sizes and competences were more rationalised. The winners are definitely the SW only Tier-1s and Tier-2s who could adapt the best agile by adding some extra steps for compliance.
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