The Development Environment

In the development environment, the actual development work is carried out in the form of the elaboration of various candidate standards. Members of the association (possibly together with other third parties) come together to form cooperations, consortia or projects outside the association and take on various development tasks with the aim of developing one or more candidate standards.

Consortium - Incubator of the Catena-X Ecosystem

Catena-X originated as an initiative of a group of companies under the title of the "Automotive Alliance" back in 2020, united by the vision of a secure and sovereign data ecosystem for all players in the value chains of automotive industry. The following year, numerous other companies joined the vision.

The Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action was also convinced by this vision and funded the project. This is how the Catena-X consortium (duration 01/08/2021-31/07/2024) came into being, bringing together 28 joint partners from research and industry with the shared vision of a data-driven value creation network of all players in the German and European automotive industry. The signing of the cooperation agreement marked the birth of this first Catena-X consortium, which officially started work in August 2021. This makes the consortium the initiator of Catena-X as a whole as well as the incubator of the Catena-X ecosystem.

The consortium partners include these 28 members:

In addition to well-known car manufacturers and suppliers, cross-industry companies, IT specialists and research institutions, the core consortium includes small and medium-sized enterprises on an equal basis, whose requirements are incorporated into the development work right from the start of the project.

Investing in joint solutions for the future

The automotive industry is currently facing major upheavals and challenges. Data sharing across company boundaries is playing an increasingly important role. In order to support the cross-company use of data on the basis of GAIA-X, the Federal Government is providing an investment impulse for vehicle manufacturers and the supplier industry within the framework of programme 35c of the economic stimulus package.

Against this backdrop, the 28 collaborative partners are cooperating for the initial development of a data ecosystem and together form the Catena-X workbench, funded by the Federal Ministry of Economics and Climate Action. The joint project runs until 31st of July 2024 - further consortia can and should follow in the ongoing operation.

The project consortium is the "workbench" of Catena-X

The actual development work takes place a.o. in the consortium: Concrete solutions were developed that were later be used by the relevant users. The focus here was on the development of technological foundations, such as the Eclipse Dataspace Connector and the Catena-X Portal, as well as concrete pilot applications. This was done along ten use cases, for which the consortium developed service offers with which companies can quickly derive concrete added value for their production or service. The consortium aimed to publish initial project results in the form of MVPs (Minimal Viable Products) as soon as possible. This had the advantage that the delivered (interim) results could be compared with the actual requirements in practice at an early stage.

What is developed in the workbench later undergoes certification by the Catena-X association before it goes into operation. Results from the consortium are also candidates for standardisation by the association.

Last but not least, the consortium plays an important role in the clear presentation and processing as well as the transfer of work content: This way, the results receive the necessary attention and dissemination to develop their impact and benefits on a wide scale.

View here some selected use cases.

Our agile collaboration - lean "Agile First" approach according to SAFe®

The Catena-X consortium is not simply a classic research association with 28 individual companies, but a delivery organization that works together according to the SAFe® approach - why?

In developing a data ecosystem for the automotive industry within just three years, initially 28 companies and institutions are working with many other partners in a constantly expanding network and a constantly changing environment. Pioneering work is being done in many dimensions. This complexity and size of the Catena-X project can only be managed and controlled with an approach based on agile standards. For the Catena-X project, the choice fell on a scaled agile approach based on SAFe®. The SAFe® framework is the world's leading framework for business agility with over 20,000 implementations.

The advantages of agile methods for work and development are particularly valuable in the Catena-X project against this background:

utilisation of synergy potentials
management of dependencies
more efficient risk management
reacting quickly to changes in the current project, such as changing staff and new framework conditions
be able to react quickly at different levels
improve communication between different areas

involve target groups as early as possible, early target group feedback

Oliver Ganser (BMW), Head of Catena-X Consortium

The project partner BMW AG (Portfolio Management) is responsible for coordinating the subtasks of the overall Catena-X project. The task of the Portfolio Management is to coordinate the individual partners and to lead the Guidance Board.

Consortium leader and portfolio manager Oliver Ganser (BMW AG) coordinates and orchestrates the roadmap, planning and synchronisation for the overall achievement of the Catena-X goals as part of the portfolio management.

The project management is supported in this work by a project office (Agile PMO). In the structure of the SAFe® approach, the Guidance Board is the final instance of project control.

In the Catena-X environment, the Portfolio Manager represents the interface between the delivery project and the strategic higher portfolio level. He coordinates and is responsible for the overall orchestration of the portfolio, including central events and the prioritisation of the impediment backlog, and leads Enterprise Architects and the Agile PMO (APMO).

Management of the operating level

The operating activities of the Catena-X consortium are defined in the form of so-called Agile Release Trains (ARTs). An ART consists of several agile teams that develop, deliver and continue to operate solutions step by step in interaction with each other and with other Catena-X stakeholders.