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Scrum for

Hardware and Co-Design

Timo Punkka

Scrum Gathering 2013, Paris

15+ years of professional product

development

10+ years of Agile development

Certified Scrum Professional

Timo Punkka

timo.punkka at ngware.eu

ng-embedded.blogspot.com

@tpunkka

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Motivation to consider Agile development for hardware development

New prototyping approach for learning in addition to validating

How fast-paced iterative planning can fit development with longer natural cycles?

Illusion of Control Chaos

1000W

20EUR

Scandinavia

750W

24EUR

Europe

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Shared Challenges

PMI:Overlapping phases, Iterative model.

Stage-Gate: “… These activities [Market analysis and customer feedback]

are back-and-forth or iterative, with each development result –

for example, rapid prototype, working model, or first prototype –

taken to the customer for assessment and feedback. …”

Waterfall (Royce):Sequential does not work.

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39% use waterfall

2010 PMI’s Pulse of the Profession

Learning and discovery

[Kuva tosi teknisestä laitteesta,

Kuvaamaan että ei voi tehdä etukäteen??]

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Organizational Culture; This is how we do things here

Software development

Hardware development

54% Scrum

11% Scrum/XP Hybrid

7th Annual State of Agile Development Survey, 2013

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Motivation to consider Agile development for hardware development

New prototyping approach for learning in addition to validating

How fast-paced iterative planning can fit development with longer natural cycles?

Up-front prototyping; “Experimenting, not validating”

4 Week Sprint

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No Free Prototypes?

Design

Review Manufacture

Prepare

Material

Labour

Testing

Rework

REWORK

Re

wo

rk

Re

wo

rk

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Innovating to

bring testing and

automation forward

Reducing the ‘get it right the

first time’ attitude

Diminishing difference

between disciplines

Positive reinforcing loop of agile co-design

Hardware unit tests

CLI

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Hardware Unit Tests

Motivation to consider Agile development for hardware development

New prototyping approach for learning in addition to validating

How fast-paced iterative planning can fit development with longer natural cycles?

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Think Big,

Think Horizontal

Adapted from

Doing Hard Time, Bruce Douglas

Vertical Slicing

Design for

manuf.

Mechanics

PCB layout

Electronics/schematic

Implement Small,

Implement Vertical

Power and

buses

Uncertain

blocksFull

Solution

Optimize

Adapted from

Doing Hard Time, Bruce Douglas

Vertical Slicing

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Schematics

3d models

Simulation

Bread board prototypes

Re-usable generic prototypes

Evaluation boards

Partial prototypes

FPGA

3d printers

Bread board

Evaluation board

6 x 1 Week Sprints

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Partial Prototype

Evaluation board

6 x 1 Week Sprints

Partial Prototype

Partial Prototype

6 x 1 Week Sprints

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6 x 1 Week Sprints

Embedded system development involves multiple perspectives, learning and discovery

Up-front prototyping is used for experimenting, not validating

Vertical slicing can be used for learning with partial prototypes

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Photo credits (all @stock.xchng)

Gear: deafstar

Light meter: GlennPeb

Question marks: immrchris