Adapting PROFES for use in an agile process: An industry experience report

Background: Agile methods are starting to get established not only in new business organizations, but also in organizations dealing with innovation and early product development in more traditional branches like automotive industry. Customers of those organizations demand a specified quality of the delivered products. Objective: Adapt the PROFES Improvement Methodology for use in an industrial, agile process context, to ensure more predictable product quality. Method: An explorative case study at BMW Car IT, which included several structured interviews with stakeholders such as customers and developers. Result: Adapted PROFES methodology with regard to agility and initial product-process dependencies, which partially confirm some of the original PROFES findings. Conclusion: The cost-value ratio of applying PROFES as an improvement methodology in an agile environment has to be carefully considered.