Decision-Making in Automotive Software Development - An Observational Study

This paper reports results from an independent observational study of an automotive software development research project. The study is carried out as a monitoring activity of the project, which is inexpensive but still representative of real automotive software development cases, thus providing the basis for more rigorous studies. The objective is to take initial steps to improve our understanding of architectural decision-making in the development of software in the automotive domain. The key findings summarize issues surfacing during the development process related to the problem articulation and formulation, the impact of participant experience, the definition of requirements, the decision process, and the effect of the decisions made on the system architecture evolution. The paper offers some insights that can be useful to gain understanding of how decisions are typically made in real settings, i.e., based on gut-feeling, which is important when designing decision support systems for architectural design decisions.