18-545: ADVANCED DIGITAL DESIGN PROJECT

FALL 2016

BRANDON LUCIA

PLANNING,

MANAGEMENT, AND

EVALUATION

18-545: FALL 2016

Product Development Steps

Concept

Refinement

Realization

Production

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PLANNING

18-545: FALL 2016

Today’s Talk

Planning

Managing yourself and others

Tools and automation

Design advice

Metrics and Evaluation

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18-545: FALL 2016

Planning

Planning step is critical (“If you fail to plan, you are

planning to fail...”)

Planning: determining tasks / timescale /

resources needed to accomplish the project goals

Sets the tone for the rest of the design

Plan now, save time later

Experience with poor planning teaches good

planning

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18-545: FALL 2016

Plan of Record

Define your PoR, even if it may change

Eliminate ambiguity: ambiguity contributes to failure

Tolerate revision: Some decisions will be wrong

Prioritize: Spend time on what matters, not what is easy.

Document your PoR: written plans stick.

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18-545: FALL 2016

Plan like a Realist

Be Concrete: If you don’t plan

for it, it (probably) won’t get done

“If we have time, we’ll do X”;

almost never happens

Face challenges: Ignoring

issues makes them worse!

Late changes break more

Surprise changes can torpedo

your project.

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18-545: FALL 2016

“One must imagine Sisyphus happy”-A lbe r t Camus , The Myth o f S i syphus

Pragmatism rules: Some work is

fun, some is painful, all is needed

Design to the Goal:

What is interesting?

What will you demo?

What must you test?

What is the “falling boulder”?

What can you cut (if no time)?

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18-545: FALL 2016

Planning and Design

Planning is design; design is planning

Specification

Partitioning

Tools

Schedule

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18-545: FALL 2016

Specification

Define success early: over-

engineering wastes valuable time

Define the what:

Features, power,

performance, cost

Define the how:

Partitioning, implementation,

and interfaces

Test for success: metrics allow

comparison to success

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18-545: FALL 2016

Partitioning

Modular decomposition

Software

Workstation

Embedded CPU (e.g., ARM)

Soft CPU (e.g., MicroBlaze)

Hardware

FPGA + core configs

Peripherals on/off-board

Divide hardware into major blocks

Computation, Memory, Control

Most projects naturally decompose

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18-545: FALL 2016

Scheduling Aids

Gantt Chart

Only useful if living

“Density” represents

parallelism; “width”

represents sequentiality

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18-545: FALL 2016

“…never let go [of your Gantt Chart]”- R o s e D e w i t t B u k a t e r C a l v e r t , T i t a n i c

Schedule realistically

Plan how long things take, not

how long you want them to take

Plan slop time

Design Review

Surface “lost” problems

Near RTL completion time

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18-545: FALL 2016

Schedule (3)

Maintain the schedule: Past performance predicts future

Evidence-based Scheduling: everyone has a "time constant”

Team Scheduling

Some teammates need more/less ramp-up time

Some have other commitments (classes,quals,job)

Some are busy and/or apathetic

Accountability to schedule is key

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Prepare for Schedule Slip

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Precipitous slope of

surprising success

Shallow grade

of realism

Plateau of Inaction

Quicksand of failure

Tim

e re

mai

nin

g

Time Deadline

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“No [person] is an island [except Kevin Costner

in 1995 cinematic masterpiece Waterworld]”- John Donne , Devo t ions upon Emergen t Occas ions , 1624

You cannot succeed in 18-545 alone

Coordination is work: but worth it.

Teammates cannot read your mind

Communication is key

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18-545: FALL 2016

" I have a bad back," Fosbury said af ter h is v ic tory, "and I lost a b ig patch of

sk in on the back of my lef t heel . Then I t r ipped on some stone steps the other

day and stra ined a l igament in my r ight foot. I guess I use posi t ive th inking.

Every t ime I approach the bar I keep te l l ing mysel f , ' I can do i t , I can do i t . ' “- ” F e a r l e s s ” D i c k F o s b u r y , I n v e n t o r o f t h e F o s b u r y F l o p , 1 9 6 8

Clarity in Goals: you and your

teammates agree on deliverables

Record in the schedule

Be strict: (with yourself and your

teammates)

Uniformity: All held to a standard

Excellence: All hold a high standard

Ambition: All strive to hit the standard

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Standards so high, you’ll Fosbury Flop

18-545: FALL 2016

Work Together

Organize Regular Meetings

“Sequential” meetings increase later “parallelism”

Share solutions and tips

Meetings are deceptively necessary

Golden Rule: Don’t be a bad teammate.

Be the way you want your teammates to be

Do quality work on time

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Design Pitfalls

Special cases (add complexity)

Regularity and standardization are good

Overly clever, under smart

Over-engineering the sub-blocks at expense of the system

Need to do both top-down and bottom-up design

Hacking at problems

Design through iteration can be bad

Stop, pop-up, rethink

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18-545: FALL 2016

How Not to Plan a Project

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18-545: FALL 2016

How Not to Plan a Project

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18-545: FALL 2016

How to fail?

Do not maintain, stick to, continuously revise your schedule.

Take on too much, over-deliver where unnecessary, ignore time

Work alone, do not communicate, stay at home, write nothing down

Never test, assume it works, commit without docs, dedicate most

time to “technical purity”

Do not anticipate surprise, do not change plans ever, be stubborn

Stay home on demo day

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