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To successfully develop agilely in the embedded environment, in addition to the Scrum basics, the special features of the complex interplay of hardware and software must be taken into account from planning to testing. MicroConsult ScrumBedded * promises success here as a tailor-made solution.
Special considerations during the planning phase
Embedded projects typically begin with defining a high-level architecture. Are you developing for single-core or multi-core processors? How many cores are required? And what is the approximate performance of the target microcontroller? Is it a bare-metal or RTOS-based design? Is a generic product platform being used? Is the project a standalone product, or part of a product family?
Only when these questions have been satisfactorily answered and the relevant parameters have been defined, does it make sense for the expert team to begin with the development sprints and thus with the agile development methodology.
Figure 1: Special features of agile development of embedded systems
Agile Embedded Roles
In addition to the classic Scrum roles such as Product Owner, Scrum Master and Scrum Team, many more roles are added in embedded development, including hardware developer, system architect, low-level driver developer, overall system tester, user documentation for the overall system, overall project manager and product manager.
Figure 2: Agile roles in the development of embedded systems
Each of these individual roles should have interfaces that need to be adapted in agile development. Without these adaptations, excessive friction occurs, often leading to the failure of the entire agile approach. Here, persuasion and mutual trust are essential to jointly reaping the rewards of agile development.
Challenges in agile testing
Agile testing in embedded environments is a particularly tough nut to crack. Only a dual-targeting strategy can help here, aiming to test both on the development platform (1) and in the target environment (2).
Figure 3: Embedded system test
Synchronizing the potentially deliverable product increments at the end of the sprints with the versioning of the target platform (including evaluation boards, pilot hardware, product version, hardware bug fixes, etc.) is just as important as defining the scope of hardware-dependent tests. Continuous system testing, into which further functionality can be incrementally integrated, represents the ideal scenario.
Build your own custom agile development framework
Textbook Scrum development rarely works. But reinventing the wheel isn't the answer either. Adopt as much as necessary from existing frameworks, but also as little as possible. Gaining your own experience is essential in embedded development.
You don't have to start from scratch: Our three-day Scrum training course teaches you the important concepts, relationships, and methods that significantly contribute to the design, implementation, and optimization of Scrum in the development process for embedded systems in your company:“Scrum in the agile development of embedded systems”.
We would be happy to assist you with further Training courses, process workshops and Project consulting all about Agile and Scrum.
*When I ask our course participants in the agile MicroConsult training seminars whether they are already developing using agile methods, I very often get the answer: "Yes, sort of – but not really." There's a specific term for this, "ScrumBut," which describes exactly this stage in the introduction of agile development.
To describe the special features of agile development in the embedded world, we at MicroConsult have coined the term „, analogous to ScrumBut.„ScrumBedded“introduced. In short, it encompasses the extensions of the standard Scrum framework to include the creation of the system high-level architecture, system stories, synchronization points between software and hardware development, extended roles such as the system architect, and dealing with the hardware bottleneck, which is particularly difficult during testing due to the simultaneous development of software and hardware. ScrumBedded This is therefore the focus of the agile MicroConsult seminars.
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