Why Ford Just Became A Software Company (Information Week)

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http://www.informationweek.com/news/...1902920?pgno=1

Ford is upgrading its in-vehicle software on a huge scale, embracing all the customer expectations and headaches that come with the development lifecycle.

By Chris Murphy InformationWeek
November 14, 2011 09:31 AM

Sometime early next year, Ford will mail USB sticks to about 250,000 owners of vehicles with its advanced touchscreen control panel. The stick will contain a major upgrade to the software for that screen. With it, Ford is breaking from a history as old as the auto industry, one in which the technology in a car essentially stayed unchanged from assembly line to junk yard.

Ford is significantly changing what a driver or passenger experiences in its cars years after they’re built. And with it, Ford becomes a software company--with all the associated high customer expectations and headaches.

Ford is making a major upgrade to its MyFord Touch interface, which is an in-dash touchscreen that offers controls for navigation, music, phone integration, and temperature. For has offered the touchscreen on select vehicles since the fall of 2010. The new code promises to speed up the system's response and un-clutter the interface, adding features and responding to complaints about version 1. Ford's also updating the Sync software that's behind the MyFord Touch interface, adding tablet integration and better voice response. Ford will offer this upgraded version on 2013 Escape, Flex, and Taurus models hitting showrooms early next year, as well as the upgrade for existing owners.

The update's addressing shortcomings of MyFord Touch 1.0--such as having buttons too small for use while driving and too much information on the screens--but this isn't an emergency move, Ford insists. Ford always planned to make improvements to the software over a car's life. "We plan to do it constantly," says Gary Jablonski, manager of Sync Platform Development.

Ford has done revisions of its Sync software before, but never anything on this scale. In the past, it has had customers log onto a website and download an upgrade to a USB drive that they then plug into their vehicle. Or they could bring their car to their dealer for the upgrade. But Ford wants more customers to get into this download-and-upgrade habit. That's why it's mailing out the USB sticks, as well as keeping the option to take the vehicle to a dealer for the upgrade. "We want customers to expect that about Sync," Jablonski says.

One example of why such changes matter: Pandora, the online music streaming service, was a little-known startup when Ford launched its Sync software in 2007. As smartphones made Pandora a hit among young would-be buyers, Ford in 2010 added support for Pandora as one of the first smartphone apps integrated with Sync. Similarly, this update lets drivers connect their tablets to the Sync system, just as they can their smartphones, to access music and other apps using voice commands

What does it mean for Ford to become a software company? Most importantly, it means two different innovation cycles: one for the metal, one for the software.

It takes Ford about two-and-a-half years to plan, develop, and build a new car. But it can develop a new software interface in months--and update it again and again over the life of the car. When creating a hood, given the required stamping machinery and assembly line setup, manufacturers must set the design long before the car rolls off the line. Automakers can change software much closer to launch, though the code still faces rigorous testing.


Jablonski paints a picture: Imagine a fast-moving gear and a slow-moving gear, each of which must mesh at precisely the right moment to create a vehicle.

Ford’s upgrade also shows a timeless lesson of software: Version 1.0 is inevitably flawed, if only because until code lives in the real world, it'll have too many of some features and not enough of others. With the first version of MyFord Touch, drivers complained that there was just too much information--rarely used buttons for power users, for instance, were nearly as prominent as essential ones, like the radio volume.

The new version reacts to customer feedback by moving only the most used features to the foreground, and the fonts are up to 40% larger for the most important functions. In tests of the new software, "people are using words that I wouldn't expect, like 'calming,'" Jablonski says.

New Skills, Processes Required

Being a software company has also forced Ford to add new skills, which it has been doing over the past 10 years. Some of those were classic application development skills that a software company would have. Ford partnered with Microsoft to develop Sync, so Microsoft helped to "infuse Ford" with an understanding of what's needed to develop software, Jablonski says.

A second big thrust is for "human-machine interface," or HMI, engineers. These are people who study how people interact with technology. Ford has been cultivating these people from within since the early 2000s. HMI engineers come from a range of backgrounds, from software development to mechanical engineers. They're people who can live in worlds of art and science at once.

The biggest challenge, though, is deciding what goes in and what stays out of this software platform. "We essentially have a PC in the car, and there's no shortage of ideas of what we should do with that PC," Jablonski says.

And there's also no end. Unlike designing a new car or truck, where there are clear timelines when a new model comes out and where the development ends, and when work on the new model starts, the software cycle is less clear cut. "Unfortunately, there's no finish line in my job," Jablonski says.