Helix Core Was the Obvious Choice for Scania

After a comprehensive evaluation, Scania chose Helix Core as its versioning platform.  To maintain control and collaboration, Scania relies on its “Common Versioning Repository” at the heart of its development environment.

Why Helix Core?

• Unrivaled scalability
• Ability to integrate with other tools
• Flexible range of features
• Rapid and high volume version control
• Audibility crucial for regulation compliance
• Installation with minimal disruption

About Scania

• Swedish manufacturer of smart transport systems, including trucks and buses for heavy transport applications as well as industrial and marine engines
• Approximately 58,000 employees and operations in 100+ countries
• R&D activities concentrated at the headquarters in Södertälje, Sweden
   

Primary Pain Points

“Software is just as important as hardware in today’s vehicles,” states Lennart Kjellén, Configuration Manager at Scania.

As vehicles become more sophisticated, the dependency on software to bring new products to market increases. Automotive manufacturers must also ensure industry compliance with regulations such as MISRA and ISO 26262.

Scania has long embraced Lean principles and has also adopted Agile and Continuous Delivery as ways to decrease time to market while ensuring product quality. Previously, Scania was using a variety of tools including Subversion and IBM ClearCase, both of which created numerous issues:

• Coordination across development teams was difficult.
• “A single source of truth” for all digital assets was impossible due to the multiple tools in use.
• None of the version management tools could handle large volumes and different types of data.
• Integration with a wide variety of other tools and platforms, including GUI and API support, wasn’t possible.
• Scania needed one solution that supported easier branching/merging and gave it a clear history of changes made.
• The administrative burden was too high in managing multiple tools and vendors.
   

Why Perforce P4?

After a comprehensive evaluation, Scania chose Perforce P4 (formerly Helix Core) as its versioning platform. Reasons for choosing P4 included:

• Unrivaled scalability and ability to integrate with other tools in Scania’s development environment, such as Jenkins, Jira, Visual Studio, .Net, and Java.
• A flexible range of features within P4 that support all kinds of users, regardless of their technical expertise.

• A good fit for Scania’s Agile and Continuous Delivery practices, providing rapid and high-volume version control.

   

Perforce P4 in Action

To maintain control and collaboration, Scania relies on its “Common Versioning Repository” at the heart of its development environment. This means:

• Users can now track the current status of a project and access a history that supports compliance requirements.
• The current size of the repository is 1.3TB. 1,200 users submit all changes made to a product, which amounts to approximately 1,000 change-lists each day.
• Branching enables developers to experiment without affecting the mainline.
• Scania has also configured the common versioning repository so anyone can readily obtain the latest executable version of the project and see its current status.

According to Kjellén, “We practice Agile and Continuous Delivery, and [Perforce P4] is at the heart of our delivery process.”
 

Business Impact

“Using [P4] means that all versions of our products are traceable and auditable. This is key for complying with the various industry regulations,” says Kjellén.

• P4 gives Scania the assurance that its versioning platform can support rapid time to market, regardless of a project’s size or complexity.
• Integration with Scania’s other tools and platforms means that P4 has joined the development environment seamlessly with minimal disruption to the IT environment, while creating a strong foundation for the future.

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