Top Trends in Embedded Development

This article is about the ever changing world seen from the product requirements point of view towards the main areas:

• Management
• Business
• Development (testing too)
• Production/manufacturing

When the product(s) changes nature rapidly, becomes agile in the feature sets, evolving faster and faster - it requires quite much from a normally streamlined and well-trimmed organization.

Taking the helicopter for a broad view on things the following comes to my mind:

• Where is the ROI when we talks about testing?
  Q: motivation for the full phase model from requirement --> test
   
• Where is the ROI when it comes to the feature set vs quality ...
  Q: it does pay-of not to test +90% - at least in the start
   
•  Where is the ROI on the many tools all organization now requires to keep track ... ?
  Q: do they really need complete new tool chain every 2-3 year?
   
• Off-The-Shelf products does not necessarily means quality and well tested products,
  Q: make or buy analysis? 
  Q: fast time to market? 
  Q: Are our resources spend in the best way? 
   
• Development department buying more and more - using time on integration and testing ... 
  Q: but they never seem to completely reach the goals - always missing 5% 
  Q: They still not faster in developing...
  Q: They spend more and more time as well as money ... 

And a lot more down that road.

Top trends in business - moving where?

• Internet of things
  • Every small embedded device - almost no mater functionality - shall in 2012 have near-range connection[wired or Bluetooth] to other devices [mobile phone, tablets, PC], 
  • connection to the internet 

• Cloud & Big Data
  Cloud Data --> data & services not on your own systems - but 'on the internet'
  Big Data    --> data sampled, transported, analyzed & feed back to you(both services you pay for), collect everything, analyse later, stored for future ..
  
  
  • more and more is data collected, 
  • more detailed, 
  • faster and faster data rates, 
  • and most importantly seamless and easy for users

• Service Oriented Architecture (SOA - Link here)
  • We (users) wants services - that's a fact!
     
    
    
• Features
• We want all different types of features in even the smallest products. 
  No mather if its directly required for the basic functionality - but because it's possible ...
• Features hence moving between many domains - 
  from mobile to settop box, from PC to tablets ....
  • Example OTA (sw update OverTheAir) initially used for advanced mobile phones, now almost all products (should?) have this feature

These above 4-5 primary things could be broken down in various areas, analyzed for the impact and relations showing the top or actually perhaps only a few of the top trends within various parts of your business.

Last things first –

Top trends in testing ...
... and how to 'coop with' the changing business demands.

How to stay on-top with testing the many new areas?

How to secure the many new feature areas are inter-operational, do they interact so humans can understand it?

How to test all that functionality applied – in a smart, fast, automatically, test often, improving coverage, …

Getting the value for the money isn’t always that easy when it comes to your own or 3’rd party stuff.

• In-house development or out-sourced?
• Automatic and continuously defiantly here to stay.
• Trends are out there saying - "Do we need to test everything? - we cant!" 
• Integrating all 'worlds' modules and system applied to your existing system
  
  

So a much more strategic testing approach is required for both actual testing, for the quality assurance (when buying in or outsourcing) as well as for the business defined features.

Top trends in Organization changes (overall)

• Adapt to the ever changing world - be agile,
  move for the customer’s needs …
  understand the changing needs and
  where/why it’s moving! 
  
  
• convince people about changes is required for your business - if you will keep the business for tomorrow
  
  
• new skills highly required in all part of organization - from top to down.
  
  
• As it have been in the mobile business for years -
   'windows of features and demands, timing' matters a lot
  
  
  • Windows of features
    • Almost all feature development is laying in the sw domain. Some wrote 90% is sw.
    • Does your organization balance equally in terms of investments and top-down strategy?
      
      
  • Windows of demands (customer demands and actual timing-in-market)
    • did you hit the demand-window?
    • What does it mean to your business ...
      • being the first mover, the only one in the market ? 
      • having the right set of features, 
      • providing the optimal services ... ?
        
        
  • Price 
    • Is the actual product cost vs sales price important?
      • if you were the only one? - no!
      • if you were the last one - of cause
    • Costs on products, costs handling distribution and sales tends to be less important if the features are there and the customers like it...
    • Speeding up development phases often the fastest way to success. Less focus on SUC(Standard Unit Costs) more focus on flexibility and .. software.
       
    • Do you invest in your people? In the right people? Do you have access to the right knowledge bringing mindst & thoughts into strategies, into products ?
      OR do you mostly invest in goods ?

Top trends in Management 

The market demands a constantly faster and faster changes to product-domains needs an often and largely change of scope and strategies applied to organization.

Ability to adjust:

• organizations focus and priorities fast,
• organizations resources shall be flexible,
• investments & cost structures will be challenged much faster
• monitor and adapt to domains changing needs
• Ability to understand, adapt to changing requirements followed by legislations and regional demands,
• Supply chain structures changes
• Service- & maintenance areas changes fast

Top trends in Business 

• need to set other goals - be agile, 
• not focusing on technology buzz words - but features and services towards customers/market (their business - is our business)
• hence domain knowledge & requirement changes
• do your business people understand their customers needs and the domain in which they operate? 
• typically customer domains are changing a lot too

Top trends in Development 

• development dept. & project managers shall take their hands off the nice technology parts and move out in the world ... 
• find new areas of features you cannot develop all things yourself 
  • it’s too costly, 
  • you properly don’t have the skills, 
    • Is the skills core stuff for your business ?
      OR just an add-on functionality/commodity?

A few core question - simply because doing so (develop everything yourself) will make you lose your today’s business - tomorrow.

• Stick to standards defined by others
  • It makes you move faster
  • It will help you to maintain compatibility
  • It will give you a ticket to broader domain portfolio
  • while slowlig increasing your company assets
    (you’re a joining a club with that feature)
    
    
• Build on well proven platforms - don’t re-invent the wheel.
  
  
• Make sure you perform a Make-Or-Buy analysis always!
  • Is this common or specific (as in IP) for you?
    
    
• Tendency has been in the past (and is still the majority trend) that we fully test the technologies applied - very detailed. 
  • But changing the products scopes , what it contains,
    increasing code complexity & volume
    we need to move to testing the feature sets, and usage
    • their inter-operability,
    • combinations and flexibility, 
    • as well as scalability,
    • error- & exceptionshandling on your platforms.

Top trends in Production plants

Even production plants & factory needs more agile & lean, be very flexible and cost focused production - typically also positioned worldwide.

• Volume per product will be lower,
• but you will see an increasing number of products-per-series,
• with more differentiation, typically software adjustable/configurable, 
• all changed happens more rapidly, and very late,
• production line(s) will be much more locally (not globally),
• even smaller (due to drop in volume per product),
• faster product releases – from startup-to-release for sales,
• also more customization is to be applied very late in the process!

NOTE

If your product/IP's are technologies and not products your focus should be quite different...

All this stuff here above only applies for companies and develops organizations not being the first movers on a specific technology. It’s directed to the organizations making products in which the main parts are commodity and none-IP specific.

The more tech oriented 'products' you made - the less the above applies to your product development.