An Incremental V-Model Process for Automotive Development

V-model and its variants have become the most common process models adopted in automotive industry guiding the development of systems on a variety of refinement levels. Along with the exponentially growing complexity of modern vehicle systems, however, the late verification and validation in the conventional V-model expand in uncontrollable ways that result in higher cost of development and higher risk of failure than ever. This paper describes an inc-V development process for automotive industry that improves the conventional V-model and variants by introducing and institutionalizing early and continuous integrated verification enabled by simulation-based development. We developed a continuous simulation model of the inc-V process, and the initial version is used to investigate the characteristics of the inc-V compared to V. The preliminary finding from the simulations of an example project is that the inc-V process is able to improve the traditional V process by saving effort, shortening duration, and increasing product quality. The finding also show how the advance of development technology impacts the systems engineering processes.