Agile Management in the Automotive Industry
Agile management in the automotive industry has, for a long time, been used in the deployment of software programming applications. The primary aim is to produce the minimal viable product within a fixed time frame, with the flexibility to remove non-essential objectives, and therefore allowing for a far more adaptable process to manage the completion of a programme. The isolated timeboxes can be managed and completed within their short burst to deliver the allocated mix of Musts, Shoulds, and Coulds.
The automotive industry has conventionally utilised a more classic management approach, where by each individual task is planned out from the very beginning and tracked against a linear timing plan. This is very useful to understand status against the programme as a whole, but doesn’t always allow for the flexibility to ensure that the deliverable is made in time and to the objective, without incurring great cost. Using this method, any delays to the tasks will have a compounding effect to the rest of the programme.
With the expansion of the automotive sector towards more software driven products such as EVs and Autonomous vehicles, the Agile approach embedded in the software development side, is slowly creeping into the Development of the Automotive products as a whole. And Automotive OEMs are starting to put into practice the Agile methodology and utilise such tools as SCRUM to manage their programmes.
Recently, within IMIG, the team has help support a particular Automotive OEM with developing a SCRUM training plan an aiding in the deployment of the training into trial runs on real world examples, as well as managing automotive tier 1 suppliers with an agile approach, catering to the suppliers software engineering background.
The UK team has also been busy getting their qualifications in agile theory, and some have become fully certified Agile Practitioners with the aim to support in the deployment of agile management projects, both inside and out of the Automotive industry.
Tom Brignell
Consultant IMIG UK Ltd.
Connect with Tom on LinkedIn.
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