Continuous Software Engineering of Innovative Automotive Functions: An Industrial Perspective

Abstract

One major challenge in the automotive industry is to deliver innovative functions more frequently. Hence, the standard development process with a fixed release plan is likely to be turned into a more continuous procedure. From a methodological perspective, this change includes applying well-established agile development techniques. In contrast to pure software-related domains, the successful implementation of software-based functions in embedded systems highly depends on non-functional requirements, and therefore we see the need for extending the pure code-centric notion of agility. In order to do so, we reflect on architectural drivers that are beneficial for the transformation of OEMs into software companies. Finally, we present our perspective on future automotive software engineering by illustrating how continuous integration is applied by a software engineer not only on the level of source code, but also on the system architecture level and the respective role.