Tag: Building a Team

18 November 2022 by Phillip JohnstonA strong indicator of a mature organization is the presence of a quality assurance (QA) role, and ideally a team. Lack of QA is Common Most organizations we have encountered neglect this role, especially startups and smaller teams. With startups, the focus is on building – the idea of releasing to customers can feel impossibly far away, and thus QA can seem not important. Small teams with limited resources may take a slightly different view, focusing their limited resources on development to try to generate more fund. One common justification for the lack of dedicated …

Continue reading “Mature Organizations Include Quality Assurance”

16 November 2022 by Phillip Johnston • Last updated 7 December 2022Embedded systems are complex projects that integrate the work of multiple disciplines: mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, software engineering, and any specialist fields and sub-fields relevant to the product. In addition, modern embedded systems are increasingly complex. Where they used to be simple, standalone projects, they are now simply one component in a systems-of-systems involving backend servers, update servers, provisioning, monitoring, analytics, and phone/desktop/web applications. A mature embedded organization must be built with these different roles and responsibilities in mind. What Does a Mature Embedded Organization Look Like? Makeup of …

Continue reading “Building an Embedded Organization”

16 November 2022 by Phillip JohnstonMany teams simply want to hire experts out of the gate. Teams want to hire people who have significant experience so they can “hit the ground running” and immediately be effective team members. Presumably, they do not want to pay the costs of training younger employees. Whatever the case may be, our ideal team would have a continuum of experience levels. We believe a mix of experience levels is important for a number of reasons: Younger, less experienced employees do not have the baggage that experienced employees carry. They are not yet jaded by past …

Continue reading “Mature Organizations Have a Mix of Experience Levels”

13 July 2022 by Phillip Johnston • Last updated 16 November 2022Embedded systems are complex projects that integrate the work of multiple disciplines: mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, software engineering, and any specialist fields and sub-fields relevant to the product. In addition, modern embedded systems are increasingly complex. Where they used to be simple, standalone projects, they are now simply one component in a systems-of-systems involving backend servers, update servers, provisioning, and phone/desktop/web applications. The chip shortage has also increased the complexity of embedded projects, since teams now must design their embedded software to support sudden changes in components due to …

Continue reading “Makeup of an Embedded Software Team”