Recently, we ran across “Time to Market“, a blog post by Jack Ganssle, on Embedded.com which offered some great wisdom about accelerating schedules for firmware delivery. Even though the article was written in 2013, the advice remains true and quite excellent.

We especially liked these recommendations:

Requirements are hard. So spend time, often lots of time, eliciting them. Making changes late in the game will drastically curtail progress. Prototype when they aren’t clear or when a GUI is involved. Similarly, invest in design and architecture up front. How much time? That depends on the size of the system, but NASA showed the optimum amount (i.e., the minimum on the curve) can be as much as 40% of the schedule on huge projects.”

That last bit of advice [“Buy everything you can.”] applies to tools. Buy the best. A few $k, or even tens of $k, for tools is nothing. If a tool and the support given by the vendor can eek out even a 10% improvement in productivity, at a loaded salary of $150k or so it quickly pays for itself.”

“Never have embedded systems been so complex as they are today. But we’ve never had such a wide body of knowledge about developing the code, and have access to tools of unprecedented power. It’s important we exploit both resources.”

Read all of Ganssle’s time to market guidelines here.

For more information about how Altia can help get embedded GUIs to market faster, connect with us here.