This talk was presented by Taha Boulaguigue (FutureLink) at Intland Connect: Annual User Conference 2020 on 22 Oct 2020. To learn more, visit: https://intland.com/intland-connect-annual-user-conference-2020/

1. 22/10/2020
Strategic Tooling Decisions in
ALM Engineering: Migrate or
Coexist with Legacy Tools?
Taha Boulaguigue – Principal at Future Link Switzerland
taha.boulaguigue@futurelink.ch

2. 2
Agenda 1.Megatrends in Automotive
2.Challenges with legacy ALM
3.Human factors
4.Making the right decisions

3. 3ANNUAL USER CONFERENCE 2020
Rethinking car software and electronics architecture
https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/automotive-and-assembly/our-insights/rethinking-car-software-and-electronics-architecture#

4. 4ANNUAL USER CONFERENCE 2020
Volkswagen expects in-house share of car software
development to increase significantly in the next few years
“Volkswagen aims to boost the in-house share of car software development from the
current figure of less than 10 percent to at least 60 percent by 2025.
…
The objective is to establish one uniform software architecture in the Group and
bring together parallel development paths in the brands.”
https://www.volkswagen-newsroom.com/en/press-releases/volkswagen-strengthens-new-software-organization-5607

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6. 6ANNUAL USER CONFERENCE 2020
Mercedes-Benz and NVIDIA build a new computing architecture
https://www.nvidia.com/de-de/self-driving-cars/partners/mercedes/

7. Challenges with legacy ALM

8. 8ANNUAL USER CONFERENCE 2020
Legacy versus modern ALM – key aspects

9. Human factors

10. 10ANNUAL USER CONFERENCE 2020
The role of human factors in ALM: as-is
• ‘The dark side of the moon’
• Denial of change until the change becomes too urgent to deny
or even to manage
• Consensus is rare in this space:
top-down dictatorship or bottom-up anarchy is common

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The role of human factors in ALM: to-be
https://www.prosci.com/adkar/adkar-model

12. Making the right decisions

13. 13ANNUAL USER CONFERENCE 2020
What to migrate first?
Risk
Management
DevOps
QA & Testing
Variant
Management
Example of a legacy ALM landscape
Ask questions
Is there a Requirement Management System?
.. or it is still done in Word or Excel
Is there a QA and Test Management System?
Are Requirements real-time linked to test cases?
.. or just imported on regular base
How do developers see requirements?
.. they probably do not see them or late
What is risk management seeing?
Testing? Requirements? Development?
.. maybe parts; but not all and not in real-time
Is Variant Management needed or useful?
.. probably this is too complex to handle
And what about DevOps?
.. that is too fast and complicated for us
Requirements
Management
Software
Development

14. 14ANNUAL USER CONFERENCE 2020
What to migrate first?
Software
Development
Risk
Management
QA & Testing
Example of a legacy ALM landscape
Requirements
Management
DevOps
Variant
Management
Set Priorities like
First: Map ALM Use Cases
Priority 1: Solve biggest pains
Priority 2: Keep Pairs together
Priority 3: Big stones
Priority 4 : Then isolated systems
Priority 5: The full chain
1 1
3
2 4
5

15. 15ANNUAL USER CONFERENCE 2020
Start small or large?
Controversial migration strategies for ALM processes and tools
Light-house strategy
Improve all
process
category of one
particular
important
system with one
project and a
best in class
team.
Rowboat strategy
Try to improve all
ALM processes and
to introduce a full
new ALM tool suite
for all systems and
projects.
Aircraft carrier strategy
Brute force process
improvement, personal
skills and tool migration
with C-Level support
Learning organization Communicate the new tool strategy with a roadmap and milestones.
Have a process and tool academy and training curriculums in place.
Involve HR for personal development incentivation and recruitment.
Frequent public support from C-Level for strategy and project.
1
2

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Conclusions
• There is no ‘one size fits all’ approach
• Build your own strategy based on
• The current ALM situation
• The urgency of the change
• The maturity of your organisation to support the desired change
• A successful ALM modernisation needs vision, a good plan, broad
management support including C-level, skills and visible success
• Radical technology changes may require a prior change of culture

17. 17ANNUAL USER CONFERENCE 2020
Summary
Transforming an entire development life cycle landscape is not only
about technology, but also about skills, culture and processes
• Build your master plan for the change
• Take an evolutionary approach
• Start with a real project with a small, multidisciplinary and strong
team that uses AGILE methods to achieve quick results
• One success lead to more and helps the engineering teams
to win broad support across the company and repeat success
• Allow mistakes, iterate, reflect and apply learnings to perform better

18. Thank you for your attention!