Comments on: Agile for Hardware and Embedded Systems

By: Práticas para a qualidade – Processo Ágil de Desenvolvimento « Sistema Embarcado Livre

Tue, 08 Nov 2011 19:32:59 +0000

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By: Dave Rooney

Dave Rooney — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

Another name to lookup is Ron Morsicato. He worked (or possibly still works) with Nancy at Agile Rules.

By: alandd

alandd — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

Once again, Mark, you are compiling valuable information for the community. Thank you!

We are implementing Scrum as our first agile method. We develop storage devices with software, VHDL and hardware design all involved. So far the software people are starting to grasp the workings and benefits. But the hardware people believe waterfall is the only way and want examples. This collection of articles will go far to get the information we need!

By: Aaron

Aaron — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

Amazing. Just as I asked about this subject on a couple groups and am looking to help a client in such a situation, this shows up. Serendipity, you make me smile! Thanks so much for this…

By: John Baker

John Baker — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

Thanks Mark for a good summary.
On Johanna’s point of good interaction with supplier… one of my clients is struggling with that… They have had a sole source provider of controller boards where the engineers can communicate rapidly during development and therefore they get rapid and accurate protoptyic boards. Unfortunately the procurement department is demanding open bid from multiple sources to ensure lowest price. So the value of the communications channel established over time is not factored in. Anyone else experienced this?

By: Christian Gruber

Christian Gruber — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

One of my clients are doing agile (now under the hood, since they were taken over by a Six-Sigma heavy-hitter) using set-top-boxes in highly constrained Java environments. They have spent a few years figuring out how to deliver incrementally on an embedded platform, but have begun to get it. Having gone towards minimalism over big-fat-architecture is one area, with highly-modular, decoupled designs which allow for less “just in case” code being deployed when unneeded have all really helped. Their best piece of work shed 90% of the code base, tripled the functionality of the piece, and made 10-100x performance gains over the older module. And this was “arrived at” by test-driving the feature-set from scratch. They retrofitted this system with the old API, and ended up being able to remove the older module whole-sale. It was kind of beautiful, really.

By: Franco

Franco — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

Another resource on this topic: "Mocking the Embedded World: Test-Driven Development, Continuous Integration, and Design Patterns" by Michael Karlesky, Greg Williams, William Bereza, Matt Fletcher. http://www.methodsandtools.com/archive/archive.php?id=59

By: Andreas Stucki

Andreas Stucki — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

When the projects get more hard(-ware), even into mechanics, we try to blend lean principles with agile. Resulting in a process with milestones/ releases (typically integration gates) because this is important for most of our customers, if you are interested: http://www.solcept.ch/en/company/processes/scprocess.html and http://www.solcept.ch/en/services/engineering/credo.html . Comments invited...

By: Rolf

Rolf — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

Just to let you know that you are not alone. As hardware developers we focus on understanding how we can merge the “first time right” methods that we have been perfecting for so long with the lean/agile ideas of early feedback and short iterative cycles. It’s not simple, but we too believe that there is something to be gained – especially in the customer/project experience (which connects heavily with funding :-). A little blurb here: http://www.axcon.dk/blog/process/agile-hardware-development.htm
Feel free to leave comments!