Using Boundary Objects for Continuous Compliance in Automotive Development

A major challenge in multidisciplinary environments, such as automotive Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs), is managing aggressive development timelines while ensuring the overall safety of products. To continuously keep track of the development, project managers and engineers employ various tools and methodologies. However, sharing and managing the data from different frameworks raises important challenges. In this paper, we introduce an approach that is a result of combining model-based engineering and boundary objects methodology that integrates safety assurance processes with agile development workflows. The purpose of the boundary object is to preserve the constraints, requirements, and procedures of safety processes and to translate the information so that it is useful within an agile development process. We demonstrate the approach’s effectiveness via an example and discuss its potential benefits.