Project types

Overview

ASAM develops its products, including standards, in projects.

Different projects entail different expectations towards the type of deliverables, although the quality expectations remain.

ASAM project types are:

  • Concept projects prepare the further development of existing ASAM standards or the development of new ASAM standards

  • Standard development projects develop a new version or versions for a standard in accordance with the demands of ASAM members and market requirements.

  • Study projects provide members an organizational structure to study or analyze specific aspects of ASAM standards or technology sectors in a collaborative way.

  • Implementation project, the output is software or tooling to support the use and adoption of one or more standards.

Unless indicated otherwise, all projects undergo all project phases and are subject to the contribution workflow for projects. Deliverables of all projects are subject to the rules defined in the ASAM Editorial Guide unless explicitly declared otherwise.

Concept project

Concept projects prepare the further development of existing ASAM standards or to prepare the development of new ASAM standards. The goals of concept projects are:

  • to propose specific content for ASAM standards

  • to provide justification or proof for the usefulness, practicability and feasibility of the proposals

In order to reach the goals and to enable the project group to develop specific content proposals, concept projects may include some of the following methods:

  • feasibility study

  • requirements evaluation

  • technology survey

  • development of a prototype

  • carrying out performance benchmarks

The minimum deliverable of a concept project must be a concept paper. The paper shall include the findings of the project group and proposals for ASAM standards. Proposals for ASAM standards shall be as specific as possible. Ideally, the concept project documents their proposals in a copy-paste ready format, as it could be taken over into the respective proposal for a standardization activity.

Upon request, ASAM provides funding for concept projects up to 75% of the total required project budget.

Link to the concept paper template to be added.

Standard development

The result of a standard development project is a new or revised standard.

ASAM provides funding for standard development projects up to 25% of the total required project budget. Each standard shall have only one development project at a time.

For more detail on versioning, see standard versioning.

ASAM distinguishes between two types of standard development project, Future Version Development and Maintenance.

Templates for specification documents: Antora / Word.

Future version development (FVD)

Development of major or minor versions of standards, including. New standards are treated as major version development (version 1.0.0). The new version of a standard(s) is defined by the project during its development and approved by the TSC.

Maintenance

Maintenance projects resolve technical issues with the currently released version of the standard. They meet one or more of the following criteria:

  • Correction of errors

  • Removal of ambiguities

  • Addition of clarifications to existing descriptions

  • Editorial improvements

  • Any kind of changes to examples, including the addition of examples

It is expected that the implementation of the new version will require low development or migration efforts by tool vendors and end users. Maintenance project shall not include new features. The only exception is, that a new feature has been forgotten in an earlier release of the standard and is absolutely required for a functional and meaningful standard. A new revision version of an ASAM standard shall be backward-compatible to its immediate predecessor version.

The only exception is, that the correction of an error or the removal of an ambiguity cannot be reasonably solved in any other way than breaking the backward compatibility. An exception requires approval from the TSC and must be documented in the standard. Maintenance development projects may be converted to a FVD project during the course of the project term, if backward-compatibility issues turn out to be too severe or new features need to be added.

The TSC has to approve this change of project type. Only those ASAM members, who were actively involved in development of the preceding major or minor version, can participate in the maintenance development project. Maintenance projects are limited to a life cycle of up to 18 months.

Unlike other project types, the paid service provider for a maintenance project can be contracted without a public request for quotation. The service provider is confirmed by the TSC and is appointed before the project starts. The project leader and the service provider must be employees from different companies.

Study

Study projects provide members an organizational structure to study or analyze specific aspects of ASAM standards in a collaborative way.

Study projects have the overall goal to enhance the understanding of ASAM standards among the participants, to promote their application in member companies. They also serve to initiate change requests or technology upgrades for the further development of ASAM standards and to uncover new standardization opportunities.

The content of study projects can be, but is not limited to:

  • collaborative self-study of an ASAM standard

  • receive training on an ASAM standard

  • carry out a suitability analysis of an ASAM standard against defined usecases

  • carry out a pilot project to become familiar with the practical application of ASAM-related tools

  • carry out an interoperability analysis of ASAM-related tools

  • carry out a white space analysis to identify standardization needs

Study projects have no expected deliverables other than a final report. The members of study projects shall submit change requests if they find issues or gaps in ASAM standards. The requirements towards contribution and editorial rules do not apply for study projects.

The application process for study project differs and is as follows:

  1. Project group submits a Study Project Proposal to the ASAM Office for project approval.

    Study project proposal template

  2. ASAM Office checks the information and approves or rejects the project.

  3. ASAM Office informs the TSC about the project.

  4. ASAM Office publishes an announcement of the project.

  5. The study project starts and is carried out as described in the proposal.

  6. The ASAM Office monitors the project activities.

Some further rules apply for study projects:

  • Participation in study projects is open for all ASAM members, e.g. also to members in a non "active" membership class.

  • Participation in a study project can be restricted to members of a specific region, e.g. Japan only.

  • The working language can be different than English.

  • The project members elect a project leader.

  • Meetings are documented via meeting minutes in English language. The minutes may be translated into the working language of the study group.

  • The project members use the ASAM IT infrastructure.

Upon request, ASAM provides funding for study projects up to the limit for small budget projects. Should a greater budget be required, a study project is subject to the full project process. See the TSC Guidelines for further detail on project budgets.

Implementation

An implementation project has the purpose to create a supplementary product that supports the application of an ASAM standard in the industry.

An ASAM product shall cover one of the following usecases:

  • supports the development of standard-based, commercial products (e.g. development tool kit)

  • ensures standard-based interoperability of commercial products (e.g. source code)

  • reduce the development costs of commercial products (e.g. source code)

  • is used for testing the standard compliance of commercial products (e.g. checker tool, test suite, source code)

Another auxiliary purpose of an implementation project can be to support the standard development by providing feedback from the implementers to the standard developers to improve the quality and maturity of the standard while it is still in development. For liability reasons, ASAM shall develop and distribute source code only as a result of an implementation project. Members may use the source code to create tools or other executables from the source code. As an example, implementation projects may include the development of source code for one of the following products. This list is not exhaustive and should only serve as a guideline of what might be a meaningful, supplementary product to an ASAM standard.

  • Checker tool for syntax checks of non-schema-based file formats

  • Checker tool for plausibility checks of schema-based file formats

  • Checker tool for API checks

  • Add-on or plug-in for de-facto standard IDEs (e.g. MATLAB, Simulink, Eclipse etc.)

  • Importers or parsers

  • Exporters or generators

  • Reference implementations of tools or tool components

  • Behavioral software components

  • Additions to popular open-source projects (e.g. Eclipse, openMDM, Artop, etc.)

  • API stubs and skeletons

The deliverable(s) of an implementation project must have product-quality. Consequently, ASAM products are professionally developed in accordance to customary quality guidelines of the automotive or IT industries, whichever is applicable. This requires that the software is developed by a contractor, while the ASAM project group controls and reviews the contractor’s implementation.

Upon request, ASAM provides funding up to 100% of the project’s required budget. Excluded are expenses for meeting participation and travel.