How to integrate with real cars -- minimizing lead time at Volkswagen

Abstract: The most successful tech companies of the world release new software versions to production multiple times a day. Thereby, they are able to quickly fix emerging bugs and rapidly deliver new features to their customers. This leads to short development cycles, minimal lead times and a high customer-centricity. Short development cycles are easy to achieve if you start a software project on a green field. Nevertheless, this does not apply to brown field environments which are usually found in big corporates such as traditional car manufacturers. For instance, if you want to integrate with real cars you have to interface legacy systems with development cycles of up to several months. We present a solution, which worked for one of the world's largest car manufacturer, leveraging in-house core development teams, dynamic stages and feature-toggles to overcome a brown field environment, allow for short development cycles and minimize the lead time.