Transitioning From Hardware To Software Development
Configuration management tools sound & vibration (S&V) has approximately 650 employees who develop and produce a complete range of sound and vibration measurement instruments and systems. The development department employs 100 people, 70 of whom are software developers. Approximately 15-20 development projects are conducted yearly by project teams of four to eight people working from 0.5 to 1.5 years on a project. Both CMS and S&V participate in the SPI project.
In recent years, Bruel & Kjaer has undergone a transition from a hardware to a (primarily) software developing organization. Originally, the company developed and manufactured measurement instruments based on mechanical and electronic components, but market demand for increasingly advanced and integrated measurement systems has changed this. Today, a typical Bruel & Kjaer product consists of a PC with several DSP-cards connected to the transducers that record the signals. The system not only measures and displays measurement results, but it is also able to guide the operator through a complicated measurement process, analyze the results, and produce a variety of reports. Consequently, the bulk of development effort has shifted from hardware to software, and Bruel & Kjaer now considers itself to be an 80% software-developing organization.
Product and systems development in Bruel & Kjaer is entirely project-oriented and most projects are organized as so-called "integrated projects" (IP). An IP includes hardware developers, software developers, sales and marketing, etc. Consequently, there are different types of project managers: an IP project manager who is in charge of the entire project, and the technical project managers who are responsible for either the software or hardware part of the project. It has been recognized in Bruel & Kjaer that the project managers are crucial to the success of the company, which means the project managers have been given a large degree of autonomy to conduct projects resulting in highly innovative products. The project management style is mainly people-oriented, focusing on aspects such as education, training, and team-building, rather than on the more technical project management issues, such as estimating, planning, tracking, etc.
The development process is documented in an ISO 9001 certified quality system that has separate hardware and software parts. The quality system is available on-line to all developers via the company intranet. However, the project managers, particularly the IP managers and the software project managers, complain that the development model underlying the quality system is oriented towards hardware instead of software. Consequently, the project managers often "work around" the quality system and instead of using the prescribed development model, use alternative development models. Such deviations from the quality system are allowed if properly documented, but this consumes substantial resources and results in sometimes undesirable process variations across projects.
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