Challenges of Agile Development Implementation in Mechatronic Development
Processes
K. Goevert1, A. Gökdemir1, C. Peitz2, U. Lindemann1
1
Technical University of Munich, Munich, Germany
2
OSRAM GmbH, Munich, Germany
(goevert@pe.mw.tum.de) (c.peitz@osram.com)
Abstract – This paper gives an overview of the
challenges in the implementation of agile development in
mechatronic development processes. For this purpose, 31
situations, 13 challenges, and three problem areas are
identified in an innovative company department. This
department operates like a start-up surrounded by a
business group structure. First improvements to solve
challenges are implemented in the department.
Keywords – Agile development, mechatronic
development processes
I. INTRODUCTION
More than ever before, agile development is
important to meet customer needs and to aggregate
specifically in every development situation [1]. Especially
in innovated surroundings, agile development is important
to develop first prototypes and early customer feedback in
early phases. Agile development enables developers to
achieve incremental further developments. This agile
approach works well in software development but has a
lot challenges in mechatronic product development [1].
Large established companies do not yet use agile
development as state of the art.
For this reason, paper documents the challenges in
agile development of an innovative department of a
company in Germany. The department works on a new
mechatronic technology with a new business model and
aggregates like an agile start-up in a company.
The goal of the paper is to analyze challenges of agile
product development in a company department to allow a
better understanding and to identify first measures to
solve them.
The paper first presents the introduction to the topic
and the relevant state of the art. Section III describes the
research methodology of the project, which is inspired by
the design research methodology. Section IV describes
section IV. Section V evaluates the results and
methodology. The last section presents a conclusion and
outlook.
II. STATE OF THE ART
This section describes the relevant state of the art. It
is structured into the definition of agile development and
followed by the challenge identification, analysis and
classification methods. Lastly, it describes the research
gap and question.
978-1-5386-0948-4/17/$31.00 ©2017 IEEE
A. Definition of agile development
Agile describes that something is "able to move
quickly and easily" and stands for "quick, smart and
clever" [2]. [3] define agile in the context of development
and they sate, "agile development combines creative
teamwork with an intense focus on effectiveness and
maneuverability" [3]. The agile manifesto of [4] explains
more details about agile values and agile principles.
Furthermore, [5] defines six dimensions which have to be
changed in a company to become agile. The dimensions
are:
• Agile target vision
• Customer-oriented agile structure
• Iterative processual landscape
• Employee-centered understanding of leadership
• Agile personal and leadership tools
• Agile organizational structure
[5] assert that every dimension are equally important.
B. Challenge identification analysis and
classification methods
Typical challenge identification methods are
interviews, self-experiment or observations [6], [7]. The
method interviews use open questions. Additionally,
different synonyms of challenge in different questions and
interviews with different team members are implemented.
This method helps to obtain a differentiated overview [6].
The method self-experiment means that the observer
works in the project with other team members and
documents the observed challenges.
Methods of problem analysis are, for example, flow
charts of problem solving or 5 why analysis ([8], [9]). [9]
developed a flow chart to solve analytic problems. It is
structured into three areas: orientation, carry out and
control. The five why analysis helps to find the reasons of
challenges. For the identified reasons, five times the
reason of a reason are identified [9].
A method of classification challenges is the clustering
or categorization [10]. Clustering means to find
commonalities of different challenges to obtain
homogenized groups which are very different from each
other [10]. [11] identifies three types of challenges:
• Objective (e.g. company politic and goals)
• Organizational (e.g. poor performance, non-
completed jobs)
• Personnel (e.g. personnel structure).
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C. Research gap and question evaluated and prioritized the identified challenge
situations on a scale from -3 to +3.
The state of the art shows on the one hand agile The measure list is based on the workshops. These
development and on the other hand methods to analyze workshops focused on the analysis of challenge situations,
and classify challenges. The research gap is to use the the same understanding in the team, and the link between
analysis and classification methods to identify agile reasons, challenges, and effects. Section IV shows the
challenges in a company department which develops a results of the prescriptive study and the project.
mechatronic product. From this derives the following The last phase of the DRM is the descriptive study 2,
research question: Which challenges could be identified in which reflects the results and methodology. The results
a company department which uses agile development and are reflected by a combination of a survey and workshop.
which measures solve the challenges? The reflection of the methodology is described in section
V.
III. METHODOLOGY Research Clarification – Goal and initial situation
Initial situation in the
The project follows the design research methodology Initial situation in literature
company
(DRM) of [12]. As Fig. 1 shows, there are four phases.
The first phase identifies the goal and initial situation. The Goal: Structural analysis of agile development challenges
in a company
goal is a structural analysis of agile development
challenges in a company, what represents section 1 of the
paper. Descriptive Study 1 – Literature review
Section 2 of the paper shows the descriptive study 1. Challenge Challenge
Literature of the research areas agile development, Agile develop-
identification analysis
challenge identification methods, and challenge analysis ment
methods methods
methods is analyzed. At the beginning of the literature
review, a search matrix was set up. It includes all
synonyms of the terms agile development, challenge Prescriptive Study - Solution
identification, methods and challenge analyses methods.
Understanding of agile
To enlarge the literature review, the “Forward-/Backward
Citation” method from [13] was used. This means that 31
references of the selected publications (backward) are challenge
selected, as well as citations of the selected literature situation
(forward). This ensures a broad focus during the research. 13 3
The work in the prescriptive study section describes chal- challenge
the essential work of the project. It starts with a lenges areas
comparative analysis of the definition of agile in literature
and the innovation department in the company. The Measure list of each challenge situation
analysis is based on an interview with the department
manager.
First, agile is defined in general. Moreover, the phase Descriptive Study 2 - Reflection
compares the six dimensions of [5] to the initial situation Results reflection Methodology reflection
in the company department. Section II A describes these
dimensions. Figure 1: Methodology of the project
Second step is the identification of the situation
challenges in agile development. Therefore, the following IV. RESULTS
methods of the state of the art are used (see section II):
This section describes the results of each step of the
interviews, research of the target situation, quality
prescriptive study.
checklists, process analysis, observations, and active
cooperation with the team.
A. Comparative analysis of agile literature
In the following, the key challenges of the challenge
definition and the company department view
situations are detected. This step uses the methods of
section II the part of challenges analysis e.g. 5 why In general, the company department defines agile
analysis, abstraction, classification, formalizing, development as a fast and flexible development in the
systematization, and structuring. From these challenges, organization as well as in development projects.
the challenge areas are derived. Therefore, the method of Nevertheless, at a certain point a strict focus is necessary
clustering is used. to enable an early market lunch of a minimum viable
Finally, the department team prioritized the product (MVP) to be agile. On the organizational level, a
challenges and developed a list of measures to solve the decentralized decision-making competence and shorter
challenges. For the prioritization, a survey was conducted. decision processes support the agile development.
Every team member completed the survey where they Furthermore, the formalized project management is

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reduced and projects can start with a vision and not with a Table 2 provides an overview of the 31 situations and in
concrete goal. the following, one example will be explained in detail.
This definition in the previous section is the starting
point of the comparative analysis between the six TABLE 2:
dimensions of [5]. Table 1 shows the results of the Challenging situations
analysis between actual (company department) and target
state [5] and the fulfillment of each dimension. The No Challenging situation No Challenging situation
fulfillment is measured in one to five points (five is the
best). The analysis shows that especially the dimensions 1
External Hardware
17
High need for safety by
agile target vision and customer oriented agile structure of development some employees
the company have high potentials for improvement. Higher workload due to
2 Complexity of interfaces 18
disregarding processes
TABLE 1:
Results of the analysis between the dimensions and the Long organizational
Missing project structure
3 processes (e.g. ordering 19
actual situation of agile in the company department process)
plan
Dimension of Fischer Situation in the agile Fulfill-
and Haeusling (2016) Company department ment Missing knowledge
4 20 No cost transparency
documentation
Agile target vision – Agile target vision –
Roadmap of Abstract vision but no Focus on technical
1/5 5
transformation classic to transformation roadmap aspects and not on the 21 High time pressure
agile customer

Customer oriented agile Customer oriented Fast decision by great

6 22 Shift of milestones
structure – Strict agile structure - New uncertainty
customer oriented business model currently 1/5
thinking no real customer Requests from business
Restriction on own
available 7 23 sides have no high
solutions
priority
Iterative processual Iterative processual
landscape – Iterative landscape – Iterative No overall responsibility
8 Startup in a company 24
processes which create processes but 3/5 by some processes
fast results coordination problems
with suppliers Loss of resources
9 Unreliability at the supplier 25 because of missing pre-
Employee centered Employee centered planning
understanding of understanding of
leadership – Servant leadership – Servant Missing documentation
Leadership Leadership is 3/5 10 Timescale is not welcome 26 by costumer
implemented but requirements
sometimes chaotically Challenges by an
structure High focus in other part
11 27 agreement for a second
projects
Agile personal and Agile personal and goal
leadership tools – leadership tools –
Vision is not clear
Involvement of Employees are involved 4/5 12 Different understanding 28
enough
employees in HR-
processes Missing synchronization
Agile organizational Agile organizational 13 Milestones are unaware 29 between software,
structure - Changes are structure – Changes are hardware
welcome, proactive welcome, proactive 3/5
Quality checks
knowledge transfer knowledge transfer is 14 Missing project manager 30
sometimes missing
poor
Not clearly defined Agreements only
15 31
The results of the comparative analysis of the two distribution of tasks between two persons
definitions help to understand the meaning of agile in the Higher cost by agile and
company department and are a base for the challenging 16 faster hardware
situation analysis. develeopment

B. The 31 challenging situations The situation no. 29 “missing synchronization

The result of the challenging situation identification is between software and hardware” is documented in the
a list of 31 situations. These are the summarized results, project as follows:
which are identified by using the mentioned methods (see • Milestone planning is conducted separately in
section II). the departments of hardware and software

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• Development of hardware and software is The next step was the survey and prioritization of the
separated with some synchronization points challenge situation. The two most important challenge
• No jour fixe of hardware and software team situations, which the survey identified for each area, are:
• Existing risk that requirements are integrated in • Project management:14, 26
the hardware development very late • Company environment: 9, 18
The documented points were identified by interacting • Innovation: 13, 21
with the team. Additionally, team members were This challenge situations and challenges are the basis
interviewed and they explained that the cooperation for the workshop to develop the measure list (see section
between hardware and software is missing. E.).
All other situations are documented on the same way
with situations and different kinds of effects. E. Measure list of each challenge area
The measure list is based on measures, which were
C. The 13 identified challenges developed in a workshop, and only includes quick
The analysis of the challenging situations identified measures. This paper only presents the measures for the
13 challenges in expert interviews by using the most two important challenge situations per area. The
methodology of section II. Often, different situations (see measures are the following:
table 2) are effects of the same challenge. These • 9: no quick measure could be found
challenges and related situation numbers are: • 13: central lessons learned document
• Slow R&D process management (19, 26) • 14: each project has a project manager
• Partly unclear responsibility (14, 24, 30) • 18: periodic time scale discussion in a team
• Complex process coordination (15, 29) • 21: no quick measure could be found
• Complex knowledge transfer (2, 4, 31) • 26: short project overview of each pilot
• Time pressure (20, 21) project and the relevant information
• Incomplete information (1, 6, 11, 22, 23, 25, 27) This measures and others to less important challenge
• Instable vision (13, 28) situations are integrated in the company department.
• Unclear link between short and long term
planning (10) High improvment
• Supplier quality (9, 16) Slow R&D process
potential
• Inflexible company processes (3, 8, 18) management structures
• Risk aversion in company (17) Complex process coordination
• General coordination efforts (12) Project management
• Insufficient customer focus (5, 7) Complex knowledge
The identified challenges show the effect of an transfer Partly unclear
underlying cause. Therefore, the link of the challenging responsibility Inflexible company
processes
situations and challenges depends on the interpretation of Supplier quality General
the biggest pain point of each challenging situation. The Companycoordination
results above represent the common opinion of the team, environment effort
Risk aversion in
which was risen during the workshops. company Insufficient at the
customer focus
D. The 3 areas of challenges Instable vision
Time pressure Incomplete
The areas of challenges represents the causes of the
identified challenges. Every challenge is connected to a Innovation information
Unclear connection between
cause and each area of challenges includes four to five short and long term planning Middle improv-
challenges (see fig. 2).The three areas are: ment potential
• Project management
• Innovation
• Company environment
Low improvment
potential
The challenge area project management has high
Figure 2: Areas of challenges
improvement potential because it includes challenges,
which be met by the department team. Challenges, which
are part of the area company environment, have middle
V. DISCUSSION AND REFLECTION
improvement potential because these challenges are
connected to the overall company strategy. Challenges of
the area innovation have only low improvement potential This section discusses and reflects the methodology
because this are typical for innovations and part of it. of this paper and the results.
Retrospectively, it has to be noted that the model of

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[5] with the six dimensions was not critically questioned
to counter the agility of the agile company department.
Here, a critical consideration and a more detailed search
for a comparative agility model would have led to a better
result. It also should be discussed whether a complete
fulfillment of each dimension is possible for a company
department and whether a complete fulfillment is
necessary or not.
To guarantee an unbiased collection of the
challenging situations, it was set to document all
unsatisfactory situations at the agile company department
without a deeper analysis at this point. This approach is
inspired by the “labeling” method of [6]. After finishing
the challenge identification and collection step, a
comprehensive analysis using the state of the art methods
was conducted. In order to have a holistic view of the
problem analysis, the start-up structure as well as the
understanding of agility of the agile company department
were also considered. Since the challenge situations are
very subjective, there is a need for their validation. The
validation of the situations by the team members was
carried out with the mentioned survey. The survey was
sent by e-mail prior to the first workshop, but not
completed by all team members. As a result, the lack of
feedback was gained during the first workshop, but this
has sometimes affected the responses of the individual
team members. However, the resulting discussions
resulted in valuable insights and a deeper understanding
of the situations.
The evaluation of the conclusions and the proposed
measures was done together with the department manager
of the company department. However, implementation
and impact of the measures could not be pursued. This
will be done in the next step. It is also important to look at
further agile company departments at the considered
company and also to look at other companies. This allows
an assessment and a comparison of the challenges,
whether they are general challenges, or rather specefic
challenges of the company.
VI. CONCLUSIONS
Companies strive to be more agile to meet customer
needs and to aggregate specific in every situation. Being
agile has many benefits but also challenges, especially in
agile innovation departments of a company. This paper
documents exactly these challenges and shows first
measures to solve these challenges. To identify this
challenges and challenge situations, interviews, analysis
of the target situation, quality checklists, process analysis,
observations, and active cooperation with the team were
done. These challenges are clustered in the three areas
project management, innovation, and company
environment.
To identify the challenges and to promote a shared
mindset, the work documented in this paper, is a first step.
After that, the team and the company have to work on
extensive measures to support the product development,
especially the agile product development. Extensive
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measures could be to identify agile methods which
support the work of the team and to implement them. This
requires a change of the mindset in the team, which will
take its time. Furthermore, an open communication is
important to identify new challenges and to work on new
measures.
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