The automotive software world is changing. From the norm of traditional processes a few years ago, with heavy weight requirements specification that was nearly complete at the point of the tendering process, nowadays a mix of traditional projects with releases every few months to agile projects operating in sprints, working with user stories, delivering every second week are equally common. Complicating the situation, several individual components (e.g. electronic control units - ECUs) that usually contribute to a function or vehicle feature, demand that the specification processes of features and components are aligned.

In addition, we experience changes in the task allocation of the workforce, increasing demand for systems engineering as well as changes to the tools landscape.

The presentation gives sheds light on current automotive specification processes, their challenges and some solutions to balance out the conflicting goals of rigidity on the one hand and agility on the other one.

Dr. Frank Houdek graduated in Computer Science at the University of Ulm. Then he joined the Daimler Research Centre in Ulm where he worked as a Ph.D. student from 1995 to 1999 in the field “Empirical Software Engineering”.

In 1999 he shifted his interests to requirements engineering. Since then, he worked in and headed various research and transfer projects with internal customers in the passenger car and commercial vehicles business units. Currently, he heads the group Requirements Engineering and Test Methodology within Mercedes-Benz Passenger Cars Development. Since 2020 he is also responsible for testing basic ECU technologies (like networking, security, diagnosis, flashing).

He has been reviewer and co-organizer for many events in requirements engineering. He is a founding member of IREB (International Requirements Engineering Board) and heading there the exam working group as well as the Advanced Level Requirements Management working group.