Call for Participation

More and more companies rely on the agile development of physical products. But can the sometimes high expectations be fulfilled at all? As a participant in this survey, you will receive an extended version of the results report and the opportunity to discuss the implications in detail with other participants in a workshop.

Agile development methods like Scrum and the manifesto of agile software development are on everyone's lips. While they are already part of the standard repertoire of software developers, more and more companies are beginning to develop physical products (e. g. mechatronic systems) in an agile manner. The fact that the agile development can function outside of IT shows e. g. Wiki Speed in an impressive way.

However, it can be observed that the reasons why companies use (would like to) agile development approaches are partly not consistent with the actual effects of these approaches. There seems to be a hype about agile development methods with exaggerated expectations. The purpose of this survey is to find out whether there is such a difference between the hoped-for and actual benefits of agile development approaches to protect companies from disappointment and the unsuccessful implementation of agile working methods. The results report will thus help you to reflect your implementation intentions self-critically.

The survey also focuses on the difficulties of applying agile approaches, especially in physical product development. The goal is to support methodological research in the search for innovative solutions to this problem field. To this end, the survey examines why industrial practice requires agile development approaches and what demands are made on the shape of an agile development method for physical product development. In contrast to superficial surveys, which you are probably familiar with in this area, the investigation focuses on a deep analysis. The survey is anonymous and will take about 20 to 40 minutes. As a thank-you note, you will receive an extended version of the survey results and the opportunity to participate in a workshop with the VDI Department of Product Development in Düsseldorf or Munich via the survey results (date, location, scope and event format depending on the interested parties).