The automotive industry is in the middle of a fundamental technology shift. Seerene, Roland Berger, and the Hasso Plattner Institute brought together senior leaders from across the industry for a candid exchange on software innovation and best practices, in an open and confidential setting.
Recordings on Seerene’s YouTube channel and slides as PDF, where the speakers agreed to publication.
Documentary photographs from the gathering, loaded from seerene.com. Shown only with the consent of the people pictured.
Thirteen gatherings since 2021, at the Hasso Plattner Institute in Potsdam, in Berlin and at Schloss Fürstlich Drehna. The next retreat is announced to members first.
Titles, names and organizations as published on seerene.com/sen/automotive-software-factory (retrieved 30 October 2026); recordings on Seerene’s YouTube channel, slides as PDF from seerene.com.
Useful signals exist today: flow and value-stream metrics, engineering productivity, code and architecture intelligence, delivery metrics. Each illuminates its own stage with its own definitions. Condensed into one status for the board, the connections between them disappear.
Every condensation step removes context. A green status says the plan is met. It does not say what capacity that took, where it was borrowed from, or which line will slip next. Research on project status reporting found 60 % of reports biased, more than twice as often optimistic as pessimistic.*
Not more status, but one yardstick for every production line and an answer no report gives today: are we getting better or worse as a whole — and where? Read per production line, across the portfolio and at every management level, traceable to the evidence.
* Studies summarized in MIT Sloan Management Review, 2014.
Every condensation step removes context. A green status says the plan is met. It does not say what capacity that took, where it was borrowed from, or which line will slip next. Research on project status reporting found 60 % of reports biased, more than twice as often optimistic as pessimistic.*
Not more status, but one yardstick for every production line and an answer no report gives today: are we getting better or worse as a whole — and where? Read per production line, across the portfolio and at every management level, traceable to the evidence.
* Studies summarized in MIT Sloan Management Review, 2014.
What is missing is the connection along the development flow, across production lines and through the management layers: the three axes of the governance gap.
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Validate the shared constraint with engineering, then prioritize the structural work and review the capacity mix and delivery impact.
A possible decision in this scenario, to be validated with engineering; not a reported customer result.
The view shows how much of 100 % funded developer time remains for value-add and which friction types absorb the rest, per production line. Open to enlarge.
See the capacity view behind this question →AI assistants raise code output faster than review, integration and portfolio decisions can absorb it. The 2025 DORA report (DevOps Research & Assessment) finds AI adoption near-universal, throughput up and delivery stability still down; a 2026 industry survey reports 85 % of respondents locating the bottleneck at review and validation, and 80 % having introduced tools faster than rules. The governance task exists without AI; AI makes it urgent — and many organizations do not yet measure its effect on one definition.
Sources: DORA (DevOps Research & Assessment), State of AI-assisted Software Development 2025 · GitLab/Harris Poll, AI Accountability Report, June 2026.
How AI impact is measured on one definition →AI adoption near-universal; delivery stability negative.
80 % introduced tools faster than rules.
Your production lines are run well — each for itself. What no line can give you is the view across them. Along three axes, today’s answer comes from reports that were condensed, translated and interpreted on their way up.
Seerene connects the three axes into one evidence layer: one comparable view, one evidence path for every management level — the structure of everything the Digital Boardroom shows.
How the view is built →Select a management level to see its views. Every figure stays traceable to the evidence beneath it, and the same question can be followed down to the system and the code.
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A 30-minute Executive Briefing with Seerene’s leadership: one management question, the evidence that would settle it, a written summary you can forward.
Leadership sets the question; Seerene connects the signals from the existing systems and aggregates them upward, traceable at every level. The loop closes only when the executive who set the impulse reads the answer: 15 minutes per executive review with your direct reports, aligned with your management cadence, one verified view, three decisions — where are we off track, who acts next, what changes before the next review. The technical validation can be delegated; the decision cannot.
The first four to six rounds are guided by Seerene, because the first deviations always raise objections. That is the mechanism working, not failing: every deviation gets the team’s explanation before it is decided.
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A number can be argued with. A map of the code it comes from cannot: every figure opens to the production line, the system, the component and its change history — without source code leaving your environment.
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Different questions, one reality. ERP and CRM gave operations and sales one trusted fact base; software production still lacks it. Choose a seat to see its question, what becomes visible and the decision it supports.
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The CTO, CIO or CXO owns the view. CEO, CFO and board read the same evidence; engineering leadership works on the causes at its own level. The one-page Executive Brief to forward internally →
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A Hasso Plattner Institute spin-off, built on 15+ years of research in software visualization and analytics.
Large, regulated organizations in the DACH region; no individual monitoring, works-council reviews documented.
Read-only connection to the existing toolchain; source code stays in place; team and system level only.
A confidential peer forum for C-level and engineering leaders, founded by Seerene and run with the Hasso Plattner Institute and the German Deep Tech Group: peer exchange off the record, masterclasses with practitioners, early research from academia and sector forums.
Short answers, each with the page that goes deeper. The full argument is in the Executive Brief.
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Every production line runs its own flow and leaves its traces in its tools. Point tools illuminate stages of one line. Seerene connects all three axes: one Evidence Layer, one comparable portfolio view, one evidence path for every management level.
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The three axes are the structure of the view. What the view shows are the decision dimensions: cost, capacity, quality, risk and business value, with AI impact as the current lens, on the same definitions at every level.
Today’s tools already connect some stages, and some organizations consolidate them across teams. What often remains fragmented is a consistently defined, traceable view across production lines and management levels. Seerene adds that shared evidence layer.
Switch the state to see the same signals as they are connected today and with Seerene.
A software production line is a software system with its engineering teams: from requirements through code, build and test to running software. Local tools see the steps, not the friction between them. The pyramid is built bottom-up from what every line already records.
Nothing is replaced or re-entered. Engineering validates the interpretation; leadership sets priorities.
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Euro and FTE figures derive from the same inputs: recovery potential ÷ cost per developer = FTE equivalent. Shown as redirected capacity for product work, not as a cash saving. Friction and recovery shares are scenario assumptions; the independent baseline replaces them with your organization’s measured profile.
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Masterclasses and executive exchanges since 2021, published on Seerene’s YouTube channel with the speakers’ consent. Pick a year, open a talk, or go to the gathering it belongs to.
Names, titles and organizations as published on seerene.com at the time of each gathering. Hover a portrait for the gathering(s).
{{ s.note }} All thirteen gatherings have taken place; the next retreat is announced to members first.
Research, executive conversations and method notes on Software Production Governance, AI in software production and the leadership of large engineering organizations. Every piece carries an author and a date; every figure carries its source and period.
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{{ articleCount }} articles since 2025 from seerene.com/news, URLs preserved.
If an article raised a question about your own software production, a 30-minute Executive Briefing is the fastest way to find out what the evidence would show.
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Documentation and photographs from the Network’s event page, shown with the consent of the people pictured. Full event page →
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Documentary photographs from the gathering, loaded from seerene.com. Shown only with the consent of the people pictured.
Titles in the language they were given. Summaries are published only where the speaker agreed.
Thirteen gatherings since 2021, at the Hasso Plattner Institute in Potsdam, in Berlin and at Schloss Fürstlich Drehna. The next retreat is announced to members first.
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Prefer to read first? The Executive Brief is a one-page summary written for internal forwarding. Direct contact: hello@seerene.com · +49 (0) 331 706 234 0
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Prefer us to coordinate? Direct contact: hello@seerene.com
Within one business day Seerene proposes two or three times and coordinates them with you. The briefing counts as confirmed only once you have accepted a date; you then receive a calendar invitation naming who will lead the conversation.
We aim to arrange the briefing with Dr. Johannes Bohnet personally; alternatively, by prior agreement with you, an experienced member of our team leads it. Nothing to prepare on your side. If you like, forward the Executive Brief to the colleagues who should join.
It is a conversation about your decision. If a baseline is not the right instrument, we tell you. If it is, we tell you what it would cover and cost in effort before anyone talks about a contract.
Yes. The most useful briefings include the executive who owns the decision and the engineering lead who knows the systems.
No. The briefing works from your question. Data is only connected in a baseline, after technical validation and scoping.
Send the Executive Brief, a one-page summary written for the executive who has to decide, or this page’s stable link, seerene.com/briefing.
The Software Excellence Network is an invitation-only peer forum for CEOs, CIOs, CTOs and senior engineering leaders who run software at scale. Membership begins with an introductory conversation: you describe your role and organization, and the Network tells you plainly whether the forum fits and what the next gatherings are.
About the forum: the Software Excellence Network · past and upcoming gatherings since 2021. Direct contact: hello@seerene.com
Oliver Viel gets back to you personally with a proposal for an introductory conversation and the gatherings that fit your role. Membership is confirmed after that conversation.
This brief is written to be forwarded: to a CEO, a CIO, a board member or a strategy team. It states the decision need Seerene serves, what the evidence would show, what a baseline asks of the organization and the next step. No registration, no sales follow-up unless you ask for one.
If you are preparing a decision for your executive team, the brief above is the summary. The questions below are the ones that usually come back; the answers are short on purpose.
A 30-minute Executive Briefing. It ends with a written summary and a plain statement of whether a baseline would answer the decision in question.
Typically about 30 days from data readiness within the agreed scope. On the organization’s side: one validation call, typically 8–16 net working hours for a technical point person, and a review session for the engineering leads whose systems appear in the findings.
No. Nothing changes for teams. The Digital Boardroom is a management view above the existing toolchain, used by leadership and engineering in a short executive review aligned with your management cadence.
That the model works at team and system level, contains no individual metrics, and that the documentation used in previous works council reviews is available for theirs.
English, followed by the German version (Deutsch). Website provider: Generative AI Seerene GmbH, Potsdam. The group companies in New York and Hong Kong are listed for completeness; they do not operate this website.
Product screenshots show the Seerene Digital Boardroom using demonstration datasets. Concept diagrams explain the approach and are not application screens. Customer statements and project references are identified separately.
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Terms that work well: baseline · Software Map · capacity · rework · supervisory board · AI · Executive Briefing. Or go straight to the platform →
Master class · 22 September 2021 · Hasso Plattner Institute, Potsdam
The automotive industry is in the middle of a fundamental technology shift. Seerene, Roland Berger, and the Hasso Plattner Institute brought together senior leaders from across the industry for a candid exchange on software innovation and best practices, in an open and confidential setting.
