Identification of Inconsistencies in Agile CPS Engineering with Formula Student

The development of complex systems such as cyber-physical systems (CPS) requires the collaboration of various engineering disciplines. The integration of computation and physical processes in CPS offers enormous innovation potential but also presents difficulties, e. g. in interdisciplinary engineering. To ensure seamless collaboration between engineers from different disciplines with different perspectives on CPS, it is necessary to analyze the inconsistencies that occur. This paper presents a multi-level research design aiming at understanding and describing inconsistency in current CPS engineering environments with different levels of agility. We provide the first research results on inconsistency perception from practitioners from a workshop with a Formula Student racing team. We describe exemplary inconsistency situations and propose patterns. We discuss how the workshop can be improved for future studies and what knowledge is needed to make inconsistency in CPS engineering comprehensible for practitioners.