IBM Software

Thought Leadership White Paper

Accelerating innovation
New approaches to software development for smarter products

October 2012

Accelerating innovation

Contents
2 The rise and rise of software in smarter products

Vehicle services

Vehicle monitoring
Roadside assistance
Advanced diagnostics

2 Defining the challenges for product delivery

organizations

Traffic services

Police and emergency

Traffic congestion
Weather

3 A new approach to software delivery for smarter

products

Driver services

News
Entertainment
Banking

5 Addressing new challenges with a unified platform

5 Adding value while controlling risk
6 Summary

The rise and rise of software in smarter

products
The software content of the latest smarter products and systems
continues to increase, delivering new and compelling capabilities
that can create new market opportunities and drive commercial
success. The first wave of smarter products enabled us to
glimpse the possibilities; now we are entering an age of mass
innovation enabled and driven by smart software. For example,
the amount of code in a typical automobile rose more than
fourfold to ten million lines between 2005 and 20101 and
IBM research has shown that software drives around 90 percent
of the innovation in such automobiles.2 Much of that innovation
relies on interconnection with other products and infrastructure
to provide capabilities as diverse as internet-based infotainment
and semi-autonomous driver assistance systems, such as adaptive
cruise and auto-parking.
At the same time, consumerization is a growing phenomenon
in the world of smarter products. In simple terms consumerization means more people are interacting with more softwarebased smarter productsfrom smartphone applications that
control consumer products, to self-service check-in and security
systems in airports, to complex medical devices such as

Vehicle to
vehicle

Tolls

Electric vehicle/
hybrid charging

Dealership

Global
positioning
system (GPS)

Vehicle to
roadside

Figure 1: Value is created by the interconnection of products, systems

and applications.

defibrillators that can be bought from online retailers. These

interactions between consumers and smarter products place
new demands on the product development process, not only
to deliver the required product quality and dependability but
also to provide the innovation to maintain competitiveness
by continuing to satisfy rising consumer expectations.
Defining the challenges for product delivery organizations

Such changes mean that software cannot be considered as just

another technical component in a products assembly. In fact,
software is so critical to the value of smarter products that its
quality and functionality is vital to the success of those products.
This criticality requires that development organizations employ
the right processes, tools and measurements to create and maintain the embedded software on which their business objectives
and commercial success depend.

IBM Software

The business challenge of creating software for smarter products

leads to a number of delivery challenges:

More software typically means larger development teams

which, driven by commercial pressures, might be geographically dispersed.
Complexity often leads to other challenges such as the
integration of third party software components, which
requires stakeholders from different organizations to
collaborate.
Although software is driving innovation in smarter products,
it augments rather than replaces the mechanical and electrical
components of those productsbecause the value of the
product lies in the integrated whole. Software development
must therefore be tightly coordinated with other development
disciplines to ensure optimum delivery.
The consumerization of many smarter products is leading
to new pressures on development teams to be more flexible
and responsive to the needs of users to deliver the expected
quality and innovation in a timely and predictable manner.
The increase in software-based functionality means there is
more potential for things to go wrong. It is consequently
driving an increasing emphasis on standards and compliance,
particularly for products with a safety-related function.

A new approach to software delivery for

smarter products
Traditional embedded development approaches typically use
waterfall or V lifecycle models with manual processes and
a variety of tools which may not be optimally integrated.
Such approaches rely on much up front planning, with little
f lexibility to accommodate change mid-development. There
is also a tendency to delay the discovery of defects until late in
the lifecycle when software and hardware is finally integrated.
These characteristics mean that rising complexity and changing
requirements can adversely affect quality and increase development time and cost.

The importance of getting software delivery right demands a

new approach to deliver the next generation of smarter products,
one that can:

Scale to work with not only large teams but teams that cross
organizational, cultural, geographical and even language
barriers.
Manage the big data associated with big development
projects by providing the information management to handle
the volume of data associated with designs, and traceability
to ensure dependencies between development artifacts are
captured.
Include automation and reporting to ensure that timely
and accurate information reaches stakeholders.
Manage the complexity of product families, not just
individual products. This means support for product portfolio
managementto prioritize the right products and variants
to meet both business and technical needs, and automation
support for product line engineeringto ensure that variant
configuration data is managed throughout the software
development lifecycle.
Minimize risk with continuous, incremental delivery of
software and with early discovery of defects. It should also
enable iterative dynamic planning to accommodate changing
requirements and priorities.
Integrate the different activities of the development lifecycle
to allow efficient processes and workflows and error-free data
flow through the lifecycle. Such integration should enable
traceability and impact analysis of changes.
Respond to the needs of relevant stakeholders including
customers, users, business and technical stakeholders to ensure
that changing needs can be accommodated throughout the
development lifecycle.
Enable compliance with required standards without adversely
affecting responsiveness of the development process by
incorporating compliance needs into process support and
automating the capture and reporting of compliance evidence.

Accelerating innovation

A critical element of an effective approach is a robust and

repeatable process that defines clear roles and objectives and
fosters collaboration. Agile processes have previously proven
their worth in the enterprise information technology (IT)
domain. They focus on improving quality and productivity by
dynamically planning to continuously address high risk items
while iteratively delivering working, verified software to provide
a true measure of progress towards project goals. Such agile
approaches can be successfully tailored to the needs of embedded development. They help improve responsiveness by identifying high priority items and tackling critical issues and defects
before they lead to expensive late-stage rework.

To be effective and provide efficient, error-free workf lows,

processes should be adaptable to the development environment
and development tools should support those processes throughout the development lifecycle. This can help diverse teams to
work in sync, allows new team members get up to speed quickly
and helps ensure that processes are consistently followed.
More complex products mean more engineering artifacts (such
as requirements, change requests, test plans and defect reports)
which must be managed effectively as a prerequisite for project
success. An effective development approach should allow you
visualize, analyze and organize engineering data to help you
make better decisions, accelerate innovation and meet regulatory
compliance needs.

Improve the software delivery lifecycle with Rational solutions

The IBM Rational solution for systems and software engineering can help you improve the key disciplines of the software
development lifecycle, including:
Requirements managementprovides traceability through the delivery process, linking development artifacts to stakeholder
requirements. Testing a product directly against its requirements can help engineers determine whether stakeholder needs
have been addressed. Additionally, engineers can ensure that all development can be linked to a requirement to avoid wasting
resources on unnecessary functions and provide a backbone to change management.
Model-driven architecture and developmentuses graphical notations such as the Unified Modeling Language (UML) as an
abstraction mechanism to support large-scale and complex development. It can help facilitate early detection and reduction
of defects through simulation and testing. Modeling provides system visualization to help improve both understanding and
communication within development teams.
Planning, collaboration, change and configuration managementprovides a mechanism to facilitate efficient, cross-discipline
collaboration and manage many dimensions of complexity in the development of software for smarter products. It can automate
and enforce change processes and workflows to capture data, online approvals and status, helping organizations achieve
compliance requirements and process improvement initiatives. Advanced capabilities support parallel development, software
reuse, real-time project health and transparency for globally distributed development organizations.
Test and quality managementhelps reduce risk in smarter product development. It links verification activities to requirements.
This helps manage testing and defect resolution. It also helps prioritize verification activities according to risk and requirement
criticality.
Engineering data visualizationhelps teams understand the big data generated by complex product development. This helps
access the right information to support effective engineering decisions and helps to improve responsiveness by analyzing the
relationships between data to determine the impact of changes. It also helps compliance by accessing cross-tool and crossdomain data to provide the required evidence.

IBM Software

Addressing new challenges with a unified

platform
To help you address these new challenges, IBM offers the
Rational solution for systems and software engineering,
an extensible collaboration platform that integrates a set of
tools and best practices to help you manage the development
of todays smarter systems, products and services. Built on
IBM Jazz, an open integration platform for unifying diverse
tools and data sources, the Rational solution covers the key
activities of the embedded software development lifecycle,
including:

Requirements management
Model-driven architecture and development
Test and quality management
Planning, collaboration, change and configuration
management
Engineering data visualization.

A complete solution, however, requires much more than just

tooling components. The Rational solution combines tooling
capabilities with integrated, customizable best practices to support teams in deploying robust and repeatable processes. Based
on a library of key agile practices such as dynamic planning, risk
management, incremental development and continuous integration, practices are tightly integrated into the tooling environment with in-context documentation, workflow guidance,
tool mentors and guides. Process authoring tools enable you
to adapt practices to your specific needs and incorporate your
own key processes. In addition, industry-specific extensions to
the Rational solution help provide support for key compliance
standards, including DO178b/c for aerospace, ISO 26262 for
automotive and IEC 62304 for medical devices.

Adding value while controlling risk

It is vital that changes to your software delivery process do not
expose your business to unnecessary risks or costs. At the same
time, changes must add measurable value and demonstrate rapid
return on investment (ROI). By working with you to assess and

IBM Solution
for Systems and Software Engineering

Architecture,
Design and
Development

Requirements

Systems
Lifecycle
Management

Quality

Change/
Configuration
Management

Best Practices and Services

Open Lifecycle Integration

Figure 2: The IBM Rational solution for systems and software engineering

Smarter product development in the real world:

A case study
The margin of error for railway operators is akin to that of
air traffic controllers, and the stakes are just as high. The
signaling systems used by these operators to coordinate
train movements, speeds and schedules are part of a very
select class of industry-specific software solutions. Modern
signaling systems must control the movements of trains
capable of travelling at speeds up to 350 km/hand must
operate with virtually 100 percent reliability or risk significant
loss of life. Invensys Rail Dimetronic, a leading European
signaling system provider, has used IBM Rational solutions
to help speed up its development process and cut costs,
reducing time-to-market for its products by at least
40 percent, while cutting risks to ensure a high level
of safety. The integrated toolset helps ensure that the
delivered code is in compliance with required standards.

prioritize your needs, IBM can help you incrementally deploy

new processes and tools while measuring their effectiveness.
As a result, you can build stakeholder and business confidence
and better control the risks and costs associated with change.
Copyright IBM Corporation 2012

IBM provides frameworks and methodologies based on proven

best practices and technologies.

IBM Corporation
Software Group
Route 100
Somers, NY 10589
U.S.A.

In addition, IBM offers services built around:

Assessments, which help address high priorities first

Guidance and deployment packages, which facilitate a
rapid ROI and reduce risks
Measurements, which boost stakeholder confidence and
foster continual improvement to help continually optimize
processes

Produced in the United States of America

October 2012
IBM, the IBM logo, ibm.com, and Rational are trademarks of International
Business Machines Corp., registered in many jurisdictions worldwide. Other
product and service names might be trademarks of IBM or other companies.
A current list of IBM trademarks is available on the web at Copyright and
trademark information at ibm.com/legal/copytrade.shtml
This document is current as of the initial date of publication and may
be changed by IBM at any time. Not all offerings are available in every
country in which IBM operates.

Summary
As software becomes an increasingly critical driver for innovation
in smarter products, you need new approaches to support and
manage its effective delivery. It requires flexible, scalable processes that minimize risk, improve responsiveness to changing
requirements and ensure compliance with required standards.
IBM understands the issues smarter product developers face
today and offers tools, best practices and industry expertise
help you improve your development processes to create more
innovative products while managing risk.

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systems and information through prevention, detection and response to
improper access from within and outside your enterprise. Improper access
can result in information being altered, destroyed or misappropriated or can
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To learn more about the IBM Rational solution for systems and
software engineering, please contact your IBM representative
or IBM Business Partner, or visit the following web pages:
ibm.com/software/rational/workbench/systems or
ibm.com/software/products/us/en/category/SWV00 or
ibm.com/software/rational/agile/embeddedagile/

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