www.bmwgroup.com
After the first 450 days there, what changes do you feel working
together at the Campus has brought about?
At the same time as moving to the Campus last year, we adopted
an agile working method known as LeSS – Large Scale Scrum.
And we aligned the organisational structure to the new working
environment.
Working in feature teams with end-to-end responsibility, our
employees at the Campus produce valid results in two-week
sprints that they can test out and experience in the actual vehicle.
It’s incredible to see just how much this new way of working
together motivates the developers. The remarkable spirit I can
sense here on a daily basis is another thing that reminds me of
Silicon Valley.
That is why I personally see the Autonomous Driving Campus as
symbolising the dawn of a new era in mobility. I’ve been at BMW
for 30 years and have both witnessed and played an active part
in many changes. But when I moved to my new workplace
at the Campus on September 18th 2017, I was in no
doubt that a new chapter in the BMW Group story
was beginning here. The Campus is different, new,
innovative and quite unique in the automotive
industry. We need to embrace change in this
way if we want to master the complexity of
autonomous driving; the development of new
technologies calls for new approaches.
What do you like most about the new working
method?
The agile working method is based, among
other things, on the principle of ongoing
improvements for both products and methods.
For example, the teams convene for a ‘sprint
review’ at the end of each sprint. They present
their results to all the employees in a kind of
marketplace. This means that when they plan
the next sprint afterwards, consideration can
also be given to issues arising at short notice
as a top priority. Then there is the ‘retrospective’,
when the teams share observations from the last
sprint and work together to identify measures for
improvements in the next sprint. The beauty of it
all is that these regular exchanges put the
developers in a position where they can
make decisions themselves, which
is crucial not only for product
advancement, but for this style of
teamwork as well. Hierarchical
delegation becomes a thing
of the past as a result, while
knowledge is scaled to
maximum effect and made
available to everyone. That’s how
you develop for the future.
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