development_process ⁽³⁾

Generally, the advice on unit testing in embedded environments is to run your tests on the PC host rather than on the target device. Whilst I agree that this is the most productive arrangement, there are a variety of reasons for needing to test on the target which can be convincing in certain situation. The technique described here allows for both. Mike Long in his GOTO 2015 presentation Continuous Delivery for Embedded Systems says "Test on your host because that's fast - it's a really fast way to develop. But also test on the target because behaviour can change in different ways, different compilers, different hardware..." Niall Cooling in his talk at the EmbeddedOnlineConference 2020 "How agile is changing the face of embedded software development" says (at 46m) on the gap between testing on the host and the target Things like TDD really are based on testing in the host, and really that's fine but of course we are typically using host compilers like host GCC and of course we know that at the moment this is typically going to be an Intel based processor. So we are compiling for the underlying OS. And it is good for finding a…

Knowing what kind of project you are working on can help you work out which planning method and software methodology to apply, as well as what management strategy to use. Once you have categorised your project into one of these four types, you will improve your expectations about the timescale and velocity. Not knowing about these project types leads to confusion about the project direction and pace, which can be demoralising for staff and leads to misunderstanding by customers, management and other departments. The trend in the last 20 years has been to apply Agile methodologies to all projects, but this Feabhas video explains why that isn't always a good idea. (The click-baity title isn't what it first appears). I'd like to expand on the video by looking at the relationship between these four project types and the appropriate planning and execution strategies. These four project types were described by Eddie Obeng, who said "As a project manager, as a business, we have to understand the type of project that we are working on because each type of project has a different management strategy associated with it. More specifically, we have to apply our effort in different places and in different ways…

In all the companies I have worked, when the product development is finished it gets passed on to manufacturing and product support but the original developer retains ownership of the design. It's important that the product support department gets full training on how the product works, how to use it, how to diagnose problems in the field and on the bench, and what happens under misuse and failure conditions. But I have never seen a product support department really own the design to the extent that they could diagnose down to component level in the hardware or line of code in the software, which means that the last line of technical support comes back to the R & D engineer. Too often, that last line is perilously close to the first line, such as when the support team are understaffed or a particularly difficult field problem arises. On each occasion, the support team need to drag the R & D engineer off his assigned project with very little notice, often within the hour of the problem arising. If the support staff are not involved in the solution, even if no design change is needed, they will not learn what the…