Determining the Application Suitability of Agile Methods for Highly Interdependent Products

Meeting heterogeneous customer requirements in short product life cycles with a variety of product functions is a significant challenge for manufacturing companies nowadays. So far, some of the requirements remain unknown until late stages of the product development project, which makes it more difficult to generate the right product features. This is mainly caused by volatilely changing customer expectations. One promising approach to address these challenges is the application of agile methods from the software industry to the development of physical products. Nevertheless, most companies are not able to adapt this approach and therefore adhere to plan-driven development methods. This is due to a lack of profound knowledge in transferring agile methods to the development of highly interdependent physical products. This paper aims at the presentation of a methodology, which determines the application suitability of agile methods for the development of highly interdependent products. Therefore, the type and degree of interdependencies between individual product scopes are analyzed. Based on this investigation and the application of Agile Indicators, an evaluation of development scopes regarding their suitability for agile development is derived. The developed methodology can be used to ensure the right degree of agility in physical product development. The applicability of the proposed methodology is shown with the practical case of a small manufacturer of electric cars.