An exploratory study on improving automotive function specifications

Abstract

In automotive system development, function specifications describe the requirements and basic design of a function. They are central artifacts and serve as inputs for several activities. With increasing complexity of functions in a vehicle, function specifications become harder to comprehend, change and validate. For the purpose of increasing our understanding of what the reasons for these impediments are and how they are related in order to derive potential for improvement, we conducted a qualitative (grounded theory) study. In this study, we interviewed nine senior practitioners of an automotive company on how they work with function specifications and which problems they encounter. In this paper, we show the results of this study and report on experiences and challenges of conducting a grounded theory study in industry.