#DigitalFirst
Last updated
Last updated
In the previous part, we introduced the concept of loose coupling using the bento box analogy to highlight the importance of modularity and independence in system architectures. The compartments in the bento box represented how we are using modularization and system layering to form a cohesive system—a key principle for modern, software-defined vehicles.
Now, as we transition into the implementation strategy, we shift our focus from system architecture to value streams, represented by processes and organizations. This is where the restaurant analogy comes into play. Unlike the static compartments of a bento box, a restaurant operates as a dynamic process, combining raw ingredients into customized dishes on demand. This perspective mirrors how organizations and teams need to collaborate in flexible and efficient ways to deliver continuous value in a rapidly evolving environment.
The bento box and restaurant analogies go hand in hand: while the bento box demonstrates how to design decoupled architectures, the restaurant highlights the processes and organizational structures required to execute them effectively. Together, they form the foundation for enabling the shift north in architectures and the shift left in development processes, which are critical to building agile, software-defined vehicles.
In a software-defined vehicle (SDV) development organization, value streams operate at multiple speeds to address diverse needs effectively. As depicted in the image below, there are two distinct but complementary streams:
Agile Value Stream: This stream focuses on fast, continuous improvements for features that require frequent updates and lower safety requirements. Agile processes here emphasize delivering minimal viable products, iterating rapidly, and introducing enhancements north of the hardware abstraction layer. These developments are ideal for areas without hard real-time constraints, allowing for flexibility and experimentation.
Safe Value Stream: This stream emphasizes a "first time right" approach for systems with high safety or hard real-time requirements. Here, the focus is on long-term planning, stability, and a fully hardened environment, as these developments often involve components south of the hardware abstraction layer. This stream supports high ASIL-rated systems, ensuring reliability and compliance with rigorous safety standards.
Together, these value streams enable a multi-speed organization to balance agility and safety, ensuring efficient development of both exploratory digital features and mission-critical systems in SDVs.
The #digitalfirst approach builds on two foundational strategies for achieving efficiency and agility in software-defined vehicle (SDV) development: shift north and shift left, as illustrated in the diagram. Traditionally, the term "shift north" refers to moving functionality upward in the architectural stack, north of the Vehicle Hardware Abstraction Layer (VHAL). However, in this context, "shift north" is also about organizational decoupling. By separating fast, agile value streams from the slower, safety-critical processes, organizations can enable multi-speed development. Agile streams focus on continuous improvement, while safety-critical streams emphasize stability and reliability, both coexisting yet independently evolving above and below the VHAL.
"Shift left," on the other hand, emphasizes early testing and validation in digital environments, significantly reducing dependencies on physical prototypes and test setups. By simulating and validating designs earlier in the development process, organizations can avoid costly delays and streamline time-to-market.
Together, these shifts enable a digital-first mindset, where decoupled processes and early testing empower teams to move faster and innovate while maintaining quality and safety.
The concept of Shift North involves moving functionality from hardware-centric, deeply embedded, safety-critical ASIL environments into more agile, software-oriented QM environments.
As shown in the diagram, ASIL environments rely on structured approaches like the V-Model, real-time systems, and model-based systems engineering (MBSE) to meet strict safety requirements. By shifting north, non-safety-critical components are decoupled and transitioned into QM environments, enabling agile methodologies, faster updates, cloud integration, and the development of minimum viable products (MVPs). This shift is supported by the Vehicle Hardware Abstraction Layer (VHAL), which ensures modularity while facilitating rapid innovation above the hardware layer.
The concept of "shift north" in software-defined vehicles encompasses three distinct levels: E/E architecture, software environments, and the integration of on-board and off-board systems.
Each type of shift north addresses unique challenges, enabling a more centralized, agile, and efficient vehicle system architecture.
At the electrical and electronic (E/E) architecture level, the shift north involves transitioning responsibilities from distributed, specialized ECUs and peripheral sensors or actuators to a central compute architecture. This reduces the reliance on numerous, less powerful devices and instead leverages a more centralized, high-performance compute system. By consolidating processing power, this approach enhances scalability, simplifies the architecture, and enables more advanced processing capabilities within a centralized framework.
On the software side, the shift north entails moving functionalities from safety-critical ASIL environments into the more agile QM environments. By decoupling event chains and isolating non-safety-critical components, these functionalities can be handled in higher-level compute environments. This decoupling enables faster iteration, continuous improvement, and more dynamic updates for non-ASIL components. Hardware abstraction layers (such as the VHAL) play a crucial role in facilitating this shift, ensuring that software components can operate independently of the underlying hardware constraints.
In some cases, the shift north goes beyond onboard systems to include off-board processing in the cloud. By moving certain functionalities or computations off-board, the architecture can take advantage of cloud resources for scalability, faster updates, and advanced analytics. This approach supports a hybrid model where onboard systems manage real-time and safety-critical functions, while the cloud handles more complex, non-critical tasks such as AI inference, large-scale data processing, or feature updates.
Together, these three levels of shift north—E/E architecture, software, and on-board to off-board—create a more modular, flexible, and agile system architecture, enabling faster innovation and better alignment with the needs of software-defined vehicles.
The "shift left" approach emphasizes the importance of addressing quality early in the development process, as illustrated in the diagram. Traditional quality models, represented by the red curve, focus heavily on identifying and correcting errors during the later stages of deployment and operation, which is both time-consuming and expensive—up to 640 times more costly, according to NIST data.
In contrast, the shift-left model prioritizes integrating quality assurance into the earlier stages of planning, design, and building. This proactive strategy reduces risks, accelerates delivery timelines, and significantly lowers the cost of error correction by ensuring issues are addressed long before they escalate in complexity.
Shift left begins with validating user experience as early as possible. Instead of waiting for physical prototypes, which take months or even years, early-stage prototyping uses tools like rapid cloud-based simulations, virtual reality, and digital twins to test UX concepts. This allows teams to identify usability issues and refine the vehicle experience in a virtual environment, ensuring customer-centric designs are validated long before physical development begins.
Simulation and virtualization play a crucial role in enabling system validation earlier in the development process. By creating highly detailed digital models of components and systems, engineers can replicate real-world scenarios without relying on physical prototypes. This approach accelerates testing cycles, supports parallel development, and ensures that functional requirements are met while reducing both time and costs traditionally associated with hardware-based validation.
Continuous Integration (CI) brings automation into the development pipeline right from the start. By implementing CI practices, developers can frequently integrate code changes into a shared repository, triggering automated builds and tests immediately. This early feedback loop helps detect and address errors quickly, preventing costly late-stage fixes while fostering collaboration across teams. With CI in place, software quality improves steadily throughout the project lifecycle.
Shift left in the context of regulatory compliance is supported by continuous homologation through virtual testing. By leveraging simulation environments and virtualized tools, regulatory checks can be performed much earlier in the process. This reduces reliance on physical test vehicles and enables faster iterations to ensure safety, compliance, and reliability. Continuous homologation ensures that new features and updates are validated efficiently, paving the way for rapid deployment while maintaining strict standards.
In conclusion, the #digitalfirst approach combines architectural and organizational shifts—Shift North and Shift Left—to transform the way software-defined vehicles are developed. By decoupling systems, leveraging early-stage validation through simulation and virtualization, and embracing continuous integration and homologation, organizations can achieve faster, more efficient, and cost-effective development cycles. This strategy enables multi-speed value streams, balancing agile innovation with the rigorous safety and reliability demands of automotive systems. Together, these principles lay the foundation for a digital-first mindset, ensuring that SDV development is not only accelerated but also future-ready.
