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Comment by TN1ck | Hacker News Reader

As someone not having dwelt in the automobile industry, I found this quote interesting:

> The idea is still right, but of course, as you have seen, we've gone through the storming phase, a norming phase, now you know, having to deliver in the performing phase, but it's what you would expect

I can guess what these phases are, but is that a common workflow in the industry? I never heard anyone to refer to these cycles in software development. For me it just sounded like a poor attempt to explain the delays with some buzzwords.

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The complete cycle of phases are:

Forming, Storming, Norming, and Performing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuckman%27s_stages_of_group_de...

I do not work in the car or software development industries; I only know it because they teach it in Boy Scouts of America leadership classes.

They're normally used as a model of team dynamics. I've never heard it applied to any other system.

German car companies (or for what it's worth, everyone but Tesla) and their suppliers still operate in waterfall development. They never learned the lessons the software industry did, because (like other brands like Sony or Nintendo that are known for good hardware but bad software), they deem themselves hardware companies at the core as they haven't realized software is ruling the world.

Design something, ship it unchanged for three to four years, launch an incremental version, give another three to four years, ship a complete redesign. And that's not just valid for hardware but for software as well. Something like what Tesla does, changing stuff around whenever something is improving or they need to save money or whatever is completely antithetic to that.

Part of the reason is how Tesla operates: they manufacture everything they can in-house, the "dealerships" (=glorified showrooms) and service stations are all owned by Tesla. In contrast, the trad-car industry has soooo many layers with independent entities: the car manufacturers, their local sub-division fiefdoms, suppliers who are locked in with year-long contracts, brand-owned dealerships and service stations, independent dealerships and service stations... changes there take ages to be communicated across the field and become implemented. Tesla management, meanwhile, can just shoot off a weekly newsletter and everyone relevant now knows that starting from production date X there are only cameras but no ultrasound parking distance sensors, no matter the consequences.

> German car companies (or for what it's worth, everyone but Tesla) and their suppliers still operate in waterfall development.

That's always easy said but not true... sure all (VW, BMW and Mercedes) try to embrace agile (with the usual problems of a corp scaling it, and also a website is just different to the car system's) and also see software as what it is and wanting to pull more inhouse and try to unify platforms.. but also need to be realistic: those big ships move slow, you need to fight a lot "this has always been done that way" and those systems are just huge, etc ..

They may try to be "agile" on parts of their product development, I can confirm that from direct experience, but the fundamental product development culture is still waterfall.

> but also need to be realistic: those big ships move slow, you need to fight a lot "this has always been done that way" and those systems are just huge, etc

Indeed. The problem is, the competition is way faster. On the one side you have "established startups" like Tesla that have moderate-speed improvement culture, but on the other side you have China which is basically Tesla on steroids but with the utter financial might of the CCP behind it.

The old guard may go under simply because they thought for too long they could bribe Western politicians instead of improving.

What’s insane is that Tesla has completely wasted the software—based advantage it once had because Tesla management is so erratic. They’re wasting time on fluff and bizarre direction shifts from the top while VW and Hyundai and Ford and GM and Toyota are all either shifting to electric or already overtaking Tesla. Tesla’s only remaining moat is the charging network, and if that continues to be the case, the competition will eventually fix that too.

Waterfall doesn’t produce bad quality software. And switching to agile will not cure their products.

Isn't that just the big corp version of "Make It Work Make It Right Make It Fast" ?

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