Managing Automotive Software Requirements and Test Management with Codebeamer ALM

Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) is the supervision of a software application from its inception all the way through to its retirement. ALM is a broad term; unlike the software development lifecycle, which is limited to software development phases like designing, coding, and testing, ALM continues after development until the application is no longer used. ALM can consist of people, processes, and tools to manage the life of an application.

ALM reflects a change in attitude towards software development that is also expressed in DevOps. In the past, a development team might work independently and hand off the completed software application to an operations team for deployment and maintenance. Today, it is more likely that developers will use an agile model and remain involved with the application after deployment, working with business owners and operations to make incremental changes as needed.

How can ALM help automotive software development?

One such ALM solution is Codebeamer from PTC. Codebeamer is a powerful ALM solution that helps manage the complexity of software and hardware projects. It offers advanced capabilities to manage multiple life cycles and to support the entire software development lifecycle, allowing manufacturers to develop better products faster. Using Codebeamer ALM can help increase efficiency and collaboration between teams and cut software project costs and time to market, all the while maintaining the reliability and quality of products, from demand and requirements management through development all the way through to testing, release and operations.

In this PTC Talk, guest speakers Ravi Poojary, ALM Consultant at Tata Consultancy Services, and Vinayak Abhyankar, ALM Solution Lead at Tata Consultancy Services, discussed automotive embedded validation processes orchestration with Codebeamer. Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) is an Indian multinational information technology services and consulting company headquartered in Mumbai. It is a part of the Tata Group and operates in 150 locations across 46 countries.

TCS works from building an overall strategy to the widespread implementation of Codebeamer as well as supporting migration in this space. From the capability perspective, TCS enables end-to-end capabilities of ALM that start from the requirements, getting converted into the design, validation, and then release. The Codebeamer platform is not an individual tool but integrates across different tools such as jFrog Artifactory, git, agosense, and Jenkins, to name just a few out of the many solutions it can integrate with: it provides an integrated environment for users to work across multiple domains be it automotive, healthcare, or industrial machinery.

What trends are driving automotive software validation?

How can we orchestrate the embedded software validation process with Codebeamer? From a validation perspective, there are several trends that are driving the automotive industry, such as autonomous vehicles, the growth of the vehicle-on-demand model, connected cars, and software-defined vehicles. This increases pressure on the validation process to maintain effective cybersecurity or functional safety. This increase in the overall validation requirement brings in the need for virtualization and shifting left the validation process by incorporating it right back at the requirements stage. Manufacturers also need continuous verification to be able to validate and deliver the software continuously. Another trend in validation is how to impact-based analysis if a specific set of requirements or a feature changes. The key here is only to do the validation required to reduce the overall cost and time. Finally, there is a requirement to integrate the process into the compliance audits with the ability to store and retrieve validation reports from the compliance perspective.

What are the critical solutions for validation management?

The industry needs solutions to address these challenges, but again, no single tool manages the overall orchestration of validation. It is essential to address the challenges with an integrated way of working, and that is where Codebeamer comes into play. Various elements must be considered when trying to address this validation management problem. The first is a single tool that will orchestrate or structure and enable the authoring of test cases and test plans. Then, the execution of these entire test cases must be integrated into an ALM platform, such as Codebeamer with different kinds of test frameworks. Then, once all of this is under the umbrella of ALM, the validation reporting and then dashboarding must be wholly automated and driven by a platform. External collaboration is also crucial, with suppliers sharing their validation reports with the OEM. Lastly, how can this platform be leveraged to reuse those validations? Codebeamer is a central piece of this entire puzzle by managing the elements and trust.

To learn more about how the automotive industry is managing the radical transformation driven by trends such as electrification, autonomous, and connected vehicles, and how this entire process can be managed effectively with Codebeamer, watch the full Talk here.