Toyota’s Agility Journey-Successes & Lessons Learned from recent Vehicle Launch!

Consumers’ growing demand for smart, connected, and autonomous vehicles, justifies why engineering-centered auto companies, are not only trying to build vehicles through lean principles, but are transforming to build vehicles based on customers’ needs. Toyota is shifting the way they build vehicles to rely on software as much as mechanics.

Nazish Usmani, Scrum Master and Ajay Jadhav, Integration and Program Product Owner, will share Toyota’s recent vehicle journey. They will walk through challenges faced as the OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) recognized the value in building software through short, iterative development cycles with rapid feedback loops, while working with Tier 1s and vendors who continued development in a traditional waterfall approach.

Is it difficult to integrate 15+ software teams with Tier 1 suppliers? How does scaling and collaboration work as the complexity increases? How long does it take to get real product usage feedback, and is it too late in the vehicle journey? Were teams more reactive or flexible when responding to the daily changes? Did priorities align when hardware and software failed at integration?

A trophy was not won, but the agility scale was tipped, with stakeholders, and selective vendors recognizing value with a flexible, dynamic approach to development. Ajay and Nazish will walk through the lessons learned, and Toyota’s strive for continuous improvement.

Speaker's Bio:

Ajay is a subject matter expert in the overarching, integrated, view for the vehicle life cycle. As the Integration Product Owner for the recent vehicle launch, he was successful in integrating vehicle hardware with infotainment and mobile customer services/ products. He is working with Infosys currently serving Toyota. Ajay strives for continuous improvement, with his adaptive personality.

Nazish is a Scrum Master, focused on the Program View. Her high energy, and collaborative approach encourages teams to align on priorities across the program. Her focus has been on emphasizing the ‘big picture view’ and visually aiding product owners in finding their own value, and recognizing inter-dependencies between teams. She has 10+ years’ experience supporting business solution software and analyzing operations.