  Context: In regulated domains like automotive, release planning is a complex
process. The agreement between traditional product development processes for
hardware as well as mechanic systems and agile development approaches for
software development is a major challenge. Especially the creation and
synchronization of a release plan is challenging. Objective: The aim of this
work is to present identified stakeholders of a release plan as an appropriate
approach to create transparency in release planning in the automotive domain.
Method: Action research to elaborate relevant stakeholders for release planning
was conducted at Dr. Ing. h. c. F. Porsche AG. Results: We present a detailed
overview of identified stakeholders due to release planning as well as their
required content and added value regarding to two pilot projects. The results
confirm the fact that almost every stakeholder is involved in a release plan in
a certain way. Conclusions: Release planning within a complex project
environment and complicated customer constellations is difficult to manage. We
discuss how the presented stakeholders could meet with the given conditions in
the automotive domain. With this contribution, identified stakeholders of
release planning from hardware and software point of view is introduced. It
helps to reach transparency and to handle the given complexity.
