Working agile to speed up research with industry: five independence principles

DS 122: Proceedings of the Design Society: 24th International Conference on Engineering Design (ICED23)

Year: 2023
Editor: Kevin Otto, Boris Eisenbart, Claudia Eckert, Benoit Eynard, Dieter Krause, Josef Oehmen, Nadège Troussier
Author: Panarotto, Massimo; Isaksson, Ola; Söderberg, Rikard
Series: ICED
Institution: Chalmers University of Technology
Section: Design Methods
Page(s): 3919-3928
DOI number: https://doi.org/10.1017/pds.2023.393
ISBN: -
ISSN: -

Abstract

One of the obstacles to the ability of research to make an impact on industry resides on the research process itself. Today, there is a need to accelerate the means for research to support industrial transformation. At the same time, there is the need to maintain scientific rigorousness, which often requires time. To solve this trade-off, this paper evaluates existing research approaches through the lenses of agile development. The analysis is based on a simulation of research process architectures, and on observations made over several research projects with industry. The results of this analysis highlight five light-but-sufficient rules of research project behavior to keep momentum, motivation and trust when doing research with industry. The paper demonstrates the use of these five rules in a "research sprint" conducted iwith two automotive OEMs.

Keywords: Design methods, Design methodology, Research methodologies and methods, validation, agile development