Designing, building and testing a fleet of novel AUV under the elevated requirements of an XPRIZE competition

The chapter describes the application of agile management methods in large hardware projects using the example of the development of autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs). Our case study concerns the development, construction and testing of a fleet of five new AUVs with associated unmanned surface vehicles (USVs) over a period of less than 2 years. First, however, the most important terms of classical project management and agile methods are compared. The Agile Manifesto and agile management methods including SCRUM and Kanban, in comparison with SCRUM alone, as well as eXtreme programming (XP) from software development, are presented. The possibilities of agile methods in the development of physically based systems such as automobiles are shown by the example of eXtreme manufacturing (i.e. Wikispeed). The experiences of the project itself, along with its participation in the Shell Ocean Discovery XPRIZE, are presented and discussed, deriving from it a development methodology.