  Agile software development principles enable companies to successfully and
quickly deliver software by meeting their customers' expectations while
focusing on high quality. Many companies working with pure software systems
have adopted these principles, but implementing them in companies dealing with
non-pure software products is challenging. We identified a set of goals and
practices to support large-scale agile development in companies that develop
software-intense mechatronic systems. We used an inductive approach based on
empirical data collected during a longitudinal study with six companies in the
Nordic region. The data collection took place over two years through focus
group workshops, individual on-site interviews, and complementary surveys. The
primary benefit of large-scale agile development is improved quality, enabled
by practices that support regular or continuous integration between teams
delivering software, hardware, and mechanics. In this regard, the most
beneficial integration cycle for deliveries is every four weeks; while
continuous integra- tion on a daily basis would favor software teams, other
disciplines does not seem to benefit from faster integration cycles. We
identified 108 goals and development practices supporting agile principles
among the companies, most of them concerned with integration; therefrom, 26
agile practices are unique to the mechatronics domain to support adopting agile
beyond pure software development teams. 16 of these practices are considered as
key enablers, confirmed by our control cases.
