a techfocus media publication :: December 6, 2005 :: volume I, no. 10
| a techfocus media publication :: December 6, 2005 :: volume I, no. 10 |
ANNOUNCEMENTS
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Tyranny Take Two In the last episode, we left our protagonists looking a bit down and dejected. Our embedded software-development superheroes had been burdened with arcane project planning practices better suited to homebuilders than programmers. As a result, management expectations and schedules almost never aligned with reality, and fingers were wagged in vain as the blame game distracted us from the real business at hand – getting products out the door. If all of this is seems a bit confusing, you might want to re-read part one of this series - “Tyranny of the Metaphor,” (read) where we discussed the problems with planning software projects using conventional methods like PERT charts and Gantt diagrams. This time, however, we’re going to roll up our sleeves and start solving the problem one piece at a time. As with almost any good therapy, we need to look deep inside ourselves first. As a group, software engineers are terrible at giving accurate estimates for work to be done, and we need to tackle that issue effectively in order to earn the credibility with management that will allow us to bring about real change in our embedded software development operations. In the previous article, I (jokingly) proposed an experiment. I said that if you chose a software engineer and a software development task at random, then asked the engineer for an estimate of time required to complete that task, you’d most likely get the answer “about three to four weeks.” Surprisingly, several of you wrote that you’d tried just that experiment, and it had worked remarkably well. If we were publishing a conference research paper on the topic, we would have just proven that our results were repeatable. How rewarding! How sad. We also explained that this trick works because of what we called the 90/10 rule. Software appears to be about 90% complete when it is, in reality, only 10% done. This 90/10 illusion often affects even the engineer himself, lulling him into a sense of security when the system he’s developing seems well on the road to completion only a short time into the actual development and debug process. If you regularly believe you are 90% done when you’ve really just started, your sense of true project time is blown away, and your ability to accurately predict schedules goes out the window with it. [more]
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LATEST NEWS December 6, 2005 Sierra Wireless Aircard 860 3G Wireless Card for HSDPA Networks Now Available from Cingular Siemens launches Ember-enabled wireless building automation system Applied Materials Delivers Advanced Solutions for Flash Memory Chip Manufacturing Unicoi Systems Delivers Embedded Industry's IPv6 Solution MIPS Technologies Licenses MIPS32(R) 4KEc(R) Core to Ralink Technology Cheertek Licenses MIPS32(R) 4KEc(R) Core for Next Generation Set-Top Box SoCs December 5, 2005 Macraigor Systems Announces New JTAG and Flash Support for Freescale and MIPS Processors Virtio Delivers Virtual Platform for Texas Instruments’ New OMAP2430 Processor Intel and STMicroelectronics Announce Common Memory Subsystem to Lower Costs for Cell Phone Makers LSI Logic Introduces HDTV DVD Recorder Processors in Advance of FCC Digital Tuner Mandate Agilent Technologies Introduces Oscilloscopes That Set Benchmark in Memory Depth, Signal Viewing Celoxica Design Used to Develop Open Source IP For Internet Protocol (IPv6) Services Applications Atmel Announces Three High Speed Low Power AVR Microcontrollers With 10-bit ADC in a 14-pin Package LSI Logic Speeds System-on-Chip Development With New RapidChip Prototyping Platform December 1, 2005 Submissions Now Accepted for DAC- ISSCC-Sponsored Student Design Contest November 30, 2005 In-Stat Announces Call for Papers for Spring Processor Forum 2006 Debate Between NAND and HDD for Portable Consumer Electronics Will Heat Up, IDC Believes |
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