Developing and Managing Embedded Systems and Products

Methods, Techniques, Tools, Processes, and Teamwork

Kim Fowler

• Publisher: Newnes
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9780124058798
• eBook ISBN: 9780124058637
• Topic: Design
• Subtopic: Management

This Expert Guide gives you the knowledge, methods and techniques to develop and manage embedded systems successfully. It shows that teamwork, development procedures, and program management require unique and wide ranging skills to develop a system, skills that most people can attain with persistence and effort. With this book you will: - Understand the various business aspects of a project from budgets and schedules through contracts and market studies - Understand the place and timing for simulations, bench tests, and prototypes, and understand the differences between various formal methods such as FMECA, FTA, ETA, reliability, hazard analysis, and risk analysis - Learn general design concerns such as the user interface, interfaces and partitioning, DFM, DFA, DFT, tradeoffs such as hardware versus software, buy versus build, processor choices, and algorithm choices, acquisition concerns, and interactions and comparisons between electronics, functions, software, mechanics, materials, security, maintenance, and support - Covers the life cycle for developing an embedded system: program management, procedures for design and development, manufacturing, maintenance, logistics, and legal issues - Includes proven and practical techniques and advice on tackling critical issues reflecting the authors' expertise developed from years of experience

Chapter 1

Introduction to Good Development

Kim R. Fowler, IEEE Fellow, Consultant

Chapter 1 describes the book’s purpose to identify important issues in developing and managing embedded systems. The material outlines the technical aspects, the teamwork, the effort, and the cost you encounter in developing an embedded system. It reveals how technical issues impact business and schedules, how personal interactions are just as important as technical breakthroughs, and the interplay of various disciplines to realize the final product. Consequently, this book is not solely for managers, it is written for every member of the project team.

Keywords

Systems engineering; integrity; teamwork; management; development; process; procedure; V-model; spiral model; life cycle; QA

Chapter Outline

About this book 2

Purpose 2

Audience 3

Road map 4

What you can get from this book 4

What you won’t get from this book 7

Definitions and some basic concepts 7

Focus 8

Five guiding principles 9

No silver bullets 9

Feedback stabilizes 9

Interfaces are important 9

All problems have a human origin 10

Good development and engineering require good relationships 10

Reliability, fault avoidance and tolerance, and error recovery 10

The business case 11

Life cycle 11

Types of markets and development 12

Recent research 12

Team attributes 12

Working together 12

Individual assignments 13

Relating together 14

Attributes of a good manager 15

Attributes of good technical and support staff 15

TLC’ed 16

Ethics 16

Success and failure 16

Systems engineering 18

INCOSE Systems Engineering Handbook 21

NDIA and SEI report 22

NASA report on cost escalation 22

NASA Systems Engineering Handbook 22

Various approaches to development processes 23

Process models for development 23

V-Model 23

Spiral model 24

Prototyping model 26

PERRU 26

Quality Assurance 26

ISO 9001 27

Six Sigma 29

Capability Maturity Model Integration 29

Comparison between ISO 9001 and CMMI 30

Life cycle phases 32

Concept 32

Preliminary 32

Critical 32

Test and integration 32

Compliance and system acceptance 33

Production 33

Shipping and delivery 33

Operations and support 33

Disposal 33

Case Study: Disastrous engineering processes fixed 33

The good 35

The bad 35

The ugly 35

The turn around 36

Trials and tribulations 36

The final product 37

Conclusion 37

Acknowledgments 37

References 37

Suggested reading 38

About this book

Purpose

The purpose of this book is to identify important issues in developing and managing an embedded system. It should aid your understanding of both the technical aspects of the project and the teamwork involved. The book provides guidelines and bounds on the effort and cost you might encounter in developing an embedded system. It illustrates principles with examples and case studies.

Much like a good project team, the authors selected to write chapters in this book have specific expertise and understand the interactions within a development team. They know that a good team will knit the various disciplines into a fine tapestry of an excellent project.

Audience

This book is for all members of a project team: program managers, technical staff, administrative staff, and support staff. Every project team member should find insight from this book for understanding the issues—technical, managerial, business, and administrative—within a project. Generally, this book aims at project teams with 6–10 people working on a single, full-time project; it can also address many issues and help project teams up to 30 or more people.

This book examines the interactions and connections within a project and its team. It reveals how technical issues impact business and schedules, how personal interactions are just as important as technical breakthroughs, and the interplay of various disciplines to realize the final product. Consequently, this book is not solely for managers, it is written for every member of the project team (Figure 1.1).

Figure 1.1 An abstract view that indicates many different disciplines are needed for project development. Illustration from iStockPhoto.

Road map

The material in this book presents best practices for developing embedded systems. Best practices include technical design, teamwork, collaboration, management attitudes, and development processes. Consequently, this book is not restricted to technical topics because developing projects is not only a technical endeavor. As in project development, the technical topics in this book intertwine with managerial issues, teamwork concerns, and legal liabilities; they cannot be separated unless artificially done so. The book’s most obvious departures from a traditional engineering text are in Chapter 2, which provides insight into the psychology of the team and personnel dynamics, and in Chapters 17 through 23, which discuss legal concerns.

Though the chapters present in a sequential fashion within this book, development of an embedded system is anything but sequential. Figure 1.2 is a diagram of the chapters and when they might be most useful within a project. The multiple paths and connections should clue you into the parallel and concurrent nature of most design and development. Furthermore, much of the design activity is iterative. Feedback is necessary for refinement of requirements and the design, it is also integral to verification and validation.

Figure 1.2 Suggested approach to reading this book.

What you can get from this book

This book concentrates on the framework that you should use to manage, develop, produce, and support embedded products. It delves into the interactions between disciplines and the potential effort that you might expect to expend....

Table of contents

• Cover image
• Title page
• Table of Contents
• Copyright
• List of Contributors
• About the Editor
• Co-Author Biography
• Author’s Biographies
• Developing and Managing Embedded Systems and Products: The Roadmap
• List of Acronyms
• Chapter 1. Introduction to Good Development
• Chapter 2. Drivers of Success in Engineering Teams
• Chapter 3. Project Introduction
• Chapter 4. Dealing with Risk
• Chapter 5. Documentation
• Chapter 6. System Requirements
• Chapter 7. Analyses and Tradeoffs
• Chapter 8. The Discipline of System Design
• Chapter 9. Mechanical Design
• Chapter 10. Electronic Design
• Chapter 11. Software Design and Development
• Chapter 12. Security
• Chapter 13. Review
• Chapter 14. Test and Integration
• Chapter 15. Manufacturing
• Chapter 16. Logistics, Distribution, and Support
• Chapter 17. Agreements, Contracts, and Negotiations
• Chapter 18. Dealing with the Government
• Chapter 19. Agency and Getting Paid
• Chapter 20. Intellectual Property, Licensing, and Patents
• Chapter 21. Open-Source Software
• Chapter 22. Laws That Can Nail Embedded Engineers
• Chapter 23. Corporate Operations
• Chapter 24. Case Studies
• Appendix A. Dependability Calculations
• Index