The useability of development processes in the automotive sector has decreased in the past years to a level at which their application and true benefit to is being questioned. Such degradation can be attributed to new additions to the processes and introduction of FuSa and Cybersecurity standards. The processes try to keep up with the shift from the traditional ‘plan–implement–test–roll-out' methodology to more agile methods. In addition, process departments typically in charge of these processes, focus on compliance to the letter of the standard to achieve certification, often with little thought to the actual implementation and the process they will be used by their engineering teams.
Process growth to meet the needs of new and more complex technologies often mandates the use of new tools, which if implemented incorrectly can lead to unnecessary bureaucracy and additional overheads. Furthermore, the language of these new processes is in a form from assessor, making it difficult for an engineer to understand, interpret and implement. As a result, engineers become annoyed, losing productivity and motivation when working with what they perceive as burdensome standards, that simply exist to slow development. This has a huge impact on the competitiveness of companies especially in markets that are facing existential threats from internal and external pressures such as the automotive industry.
Against popular belief, the application of generative AI (and large language models) will not solve the problem. On the contrary, it risks automating complex processes in the same unfamiliar language and creating documents to serve process overhead, rather than engineering development. This paper presents inefficiencies in the current state-of-the art processes used in the automotive sector and proposes a structured approach that increases the efficiency of automotive software development. It does so by documenting and implementing development processes based on how engineers actually perform their work. In the second step the adjustments that are necessary to ensure compliance of the product with industry standards are made. Such an approach produces efficient, compact and compliant process definition.