Product Development | Automotive
Governance Structure: Clear Roles and Decision-Making Processes at an Automaker
Shorter product lifecycles, along with volatile regulatory and competitive demands, led a leading automaker to consider what a governance structure for more flexible and efficient decision-making processes in product development should look like. The established vehicle development process was highly complex and tightly interconnected. A direct adoption of agile working methods would have required extensive system adjustments. Together with KBC, the company developed a viable concept for a governance structure that provided clarity on roles, decision-making processes, and collaboration, without fundamentally altering the established systems.
The Customer
A leading automaker
The client is a leading international automaker with a highly complex and closely integrated vehicle development process that tightly interlinks numerous departments and development disciplines. In light of shorter product life cycles and volatile regulatory and competitive requirements, the company recognized that a governance structure featuring new roles and more flexible and efficient decision-making processes in product development was necessary to remain competitive. At the same time, it was unclear exactly what this governance structure should look like and how it could be implemented in an established, highly interconnected development environment without fundamentally modifying the existing systems. This starting point made the project a strategically significant but also challenging task for the entire development organization, as changes to individual processes had an immediate ripple effect on many adjacent areas and interfaces and therefore had to be carefully coordinated.
The Project
Governance Structure for New Roles and Decision-Making Processes
The goal of the project was to develop a governance structure that would make roles and decision-making processes in product development clearer, more flexible, and more efficient. Instead of changing all processes at once, KBC, in collaboration with the client, initially focused on those individual processes with the greatest potential to improve efficiency and agility. The selected processes were then adapted to align with the target dimensions of agile working and the new governance structure and tested in practice before being rolled out across the organization. The redesigned processes were coordinated with the relevant process stakeholders, agreed upon, and organizationally embedded so that they could be firmly established in the day-to-day operations of vehicle development. Particular attention was paid to accounting for the high complexity and degree of interconnectivity of the established processes without triggering extensive system adjustments, so that ongoing vehicle projects were not jeopardized during the transition.
The result
A Robust Governance Structure for Vehicle Development
The project culminated in a clearly structured concept for a robust governance framework. The development processes were adapted to accommodate new roles and decision-making structures, as well as new agile practices and cadences. This ensured operational effectiveness between the vehicle project and the participating development departments throughout the redesigned processes, even beyond the immediate project duration. The client now has a governance structure that enables more flexible and faster decision-making while simultaneously addressing the high complexity of vehicle development. As a result, the development organization is better prepared to respond to shorter product lifecycles and volatile regulatory and competitive requirements in the future, without having to reevaluate the entire process landscape every time a new requirement arises. The new structure thus provides a robust foundation for further steps toward more agile product development overall.
