8 Hardware Product Development Tips for Software Companies

2023-04-07

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In this episode... Renaud and Andrew talk about how to develop hardware products specifically for software companies used to using an agile design approach (often SCRUM) for software products that now need to create a new hardware product to support their business (such as a device that runs on the software). They share their thoughts on the book 'SCRUM for hardware design' by Prof. David G. Ullman, warnings about the limitations of the agile design approach where hardware is concerned that you'll need to be aware of and plan for, and 8 tips for software companies who're in this position to help you understand where other software companies often go...

In this episode...

Renaud and Andrew talk about how to develop hardware products specifically for software companies used to using an agile design approach (often SCRUM) for software products that now need to create a new hardware product to support their business (such as a device that runs on the software).

They share their thoughts on the book 'SCRUM for hardware design' by Prof. David G. Ullman, warnings about the limitations of the agile design approach where hardware is concerned that you'll need to be aware of and plan for, and 8 tips for software companies who're in this position to help you understand where other software companies often go wrong.

Show Sections

00:00 - Greetings & today's topic.

01:56 - What's the difference between traditional project management and the agile approach?

08:18 - Why is the agile design approach so popular with software companies?

11:07 - 13 points about hardware design is different from software design from the book 'SCRUM for hardware design' by Prof. David G. Ullman.

Less evident modularity
Longer design cycles
Higher functional interdependence
Poor refactoring opportunities
Higher need for specialization
Longer time to demonstrate function
Higher cost of change
More demanding range of operation
Different testing demands
More secondary design activities
More challenges in developing specifications
Higher difficulty proving a task is done
Higher price of premature commitment

23:20 - 8 points that companies that are used to running agile design for software development tend to overlook when developing new hardware products.

23:39 - 1. Agile is good, but planning and documentation can't be skipped.

31:35 - 2. You need to freeze the product design (including freezing the firmware) at one point.

33:48 - 3. An engineering change management process must be taken seriously from a certain point.

35:46 - 4. You need supply chain visibility and to manage it yourself.

39:15 - 5. You will need a quality function.

42:21 - 6. BOM, drawings, schematics, etc. are all as important as software code.

47:55 - 7. Product reliability is important, especially if they have a "product as a service" business model.

52:46 - 8. Product compliance is an entire topic to take seriously.

54:37 - Summary and wrapping up.