What we achieved together
The international automobile manufacturer Audi faced the challenge of reevaluating an established, internally developed planning software for vehicle development in terms of technical requirements, product interfaces, and team responsibilities. At the time of collaboration, the planning software was developed by 7 engineering teams and encompassed the entire vehicle development process. It was thus a central component in the digitization of vehicle development and essential for cross-departmental collaboration.
In collaboration with various departments, development leadership, and engineering teams, the product and team interfaces were reevaluated to ensure the software's future viability. With a small team of Domain-Driven Design experts from Comsysto Reply, we introduced various workshop formats and approaches (including Event Storming, Bounded Context Mapping, Team Topologies) to methodically assist employees from different departments and development in collaboratively establishing a solid decision-making basis for the future product and team interfaces.
In an initial kick-off meeting, all stakeholder groups were brought together to align on the objectives of the Re-Discovery Phase. Following that, there was an opportunity to address individual questions and align expectations in smaller Setting-the-Stage sessions. This approach allowed us to optimally prepare all 45 participants for the two-day Event Storming workshop at Audi's location, ensuring a productive workshop.
In just two days, it was possible to visually represent the entire domain and associated processes on the wall using Post-Its, thus creating a shared understanding of the domain's intricacies. This not only revealed opportunities for improvements in the overall product but also highlighted potential synergies. The participation of departmental representatives, development leadership, and engineers from the engineering teams facilitated invaluable knowledge exchange across both functional and technical silos. This significantly improved collaboration and communication among the teams.
The results of the Event Storming workshop, along with the initial Context Maps, served as the foundation for all subsequent collaborative workshop formats and beyond.
In subsequent Context Mapping workshops (both remote and onsite), we analyzed the identified functional subdomains (Bounded Contexts), their relationships, dependencies, and the associated data flows. By introducing Team Topologies, we were able to map these onto different types of teams (stream aligned, complicated subsystem, enabling, and platform teams) and evaluate various communication structures between the development teams, comparing different variants against each other.
With the methodological support of Comsysto Reply, the expert team from Audi was able to establish a shared vision of the software architecture and team structures. This shared vision now serves as the foundation for the further development of the planning software.
In the subsequent Transition Phase, the details of the new structure were defined, and the implementation process was initiated.
I had the pleasure of working with Comsysto Reply on an Audi project that required a complex software solution. At this stage of development it was important to clearly understand and define the business processes. Comsysto Reply helped us with this by using their expertise in event storming and context mapping and I would recommend Comsysto Reply to anyone looking for an effective way to clearly define and understand business processes. Their ability to simplify complex problems and their effective facilitation make them a valuable partner in any project.
(translated from German)
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