Technology and Strategy (T&S) was founded in 2008 and is a global consulting company with German-French DNA, specializing in engineering, IT, digital technology, and project management for the automotive, biomedical, rail, industry, energy, finance & insurance, and special vehicles sectors. The 3,500 employees come from 45 nations and are distributed across 27 offices in 10 countries, including France, Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, Tunisia, Singapore, Hong Kong, Portugal, Egypt, and the Netherlands.
80% of Engineering Projects in the Automotive Sector
Eric Obser, as Technical Director, is responsible for the engineering division: “80% of our activities are in the automotive sector, mostly in the embedded systems area. This means we specialize in programming functions for control units used in vehicles. However, our service extends across the entire V-cycle – from requirements analysis, through architecture, development, testing (including penetration testing), control unit integration, to vehicle qualification testing.”
T&S offers a wide range of services in the field of embedded systems development and integration. These range from model-based systems engineering (MBSE), software development (Bare Metal, MBD, Classic and Adaptive AUTOSAR, Linux) to the associated tests – from code to vehicle testing. In addition to development activities, there is a strong focus on project management, quality management (ASPICE), functional safety (ISO26262), DevOps, and embedded cybersecurity (ISO21434) to deliver complete embedded systems to T&S customers.
Project Organization: Engineering Expertise at a Fixed Price or On-Demand
The project organization in the engineering sector at T&S is based on three pillars:
- The provision of resources as technical support (T&M)
- The offer of a well-defined service catalogue (Service Center)
- Fixed-price projects.
Results-oriented projects make up 55% of the portfolio, and not only the price is fixed – promises are also made regarding the schedule and quality. T&S takes project responsibility, which gives planning and project management a paramount role.
Activities provided by the Service Center, on the other hand, require a high degree of flexibility. Planning is done in sprints – if necessary, also aligned with the customer’s sprints.
The dependency of project management on other systems was the biggest obstacle before the introduction of Projectworx in 2014.
“In project business, sometimes things have to move very quickly. We needed a tool that operates independently of other systems like SAP,” explains Mr. Obser. “Projectworx is integrated into our system landscape, but our project managers can make adjustments and simulate scenarios very quickly and with little effort. With Projectworx, we have all the information available in one central place, so we can give our customers realistic promises and keep them.”
Planning Templates to Ensure Automotive SPICE® Processes
It is also essential to adhere to the various ASPICE processes to which T&S is committed. Automotive SPICE® was initiated by the Special Interest Group Automotive and the German Association of the Automotive Industry (VDA) to evaluate the maturity level of development processes of electronic and software-based systems. Compliance with the reference processes in various areas – from engineering to organization – is assessed in evaluations.
“With the planning template, we ensure that all steps are completed. Projectworx also enables us to realistically assess resource availability, monitor project progress, and react immediately to deviations. Our projects are part of larger development projects of the customers. Therefore, it is essential that we meet our milestones. Projectworx helps us enormously with this.”
(Screenshot: example image based on T&S template)
Pre-Sales Phase: Professional Planning as a Sales Argument
“Thanks to the template, we can already present a plan to the customer during the acquisition phase, which also includes a detailed estimate of the resource effort. We have a template in planning, know which steps are necessary, and just need to fill it out. And we can also tell the customers what we expect from them. When we need something from them to be able to deliver on time. This is very well received.”
After roughly estimating the resource effort for individual work packages, T&S also considers the graphical representation of the overall workload.
“This feature of Projectworx is a real asset for us. The project manager’s assessment is based on a lot of experience and knowledge of their team’s capabilities, but you can’t calculate all the factors in your head. In the graphical representation of resources, I immediately see where there are peaks and that I might not need 4 but temporarily even twice as many people to meet the deadline.”
Delivery Phase: Proactive Project Controlling & Reporting is a Must
This also applies to the activities from the service catalog, which customers can commission from T&S as needed. Often there are framework agreements that cover a certain number of hours, and the customer sends tasks from their backlog that need to be worked on.
All these tasks are recorded in Projectworx as a work package. For sprint planning, T&S prefers to use the Gantt plan because it allows them to simultaneously capture and clearly display the effort estimation. Employees record every activity in collaboration with the task in the respective work package, so hours worked and remaining efforts can be viewed at any time.
“The goal is to stay under the estimated hours. If we go over the target, we can start the analysis thanks to the integrated project controlling. Where did it go wrong? Where were problems not communicated or communicated too late? With larger tasks, we can also intervene early and negotiate a solution with the customer if an unexpected additional effort arises. All this is only possible because we have the data available at all times.”
According to Mr. Obser, an added value also arises from making the performance visible to the customer.
“We are not in the customer’s tool landscape, and often we also work remotely. Therefore, we need more control, reporting, and metrics to show in the weekly customer meeting what we have worked on, what progress we have made, and where challenges have arisen.”
“Thanks to Projectworx, we no longer have to wait for reports from controlling but have all the data directly at hand. This gives us much more control over the project work and an overview of the resources used. We can act proactively and give our customers reliable promises and information.”
Eric Obser, Technical Director Engineering at Technology & Strategy
