The olden days… A long time ago (seemingly) I graduated from university with my engineering degree.  I was lucky, my first job was with a small company and I performed many roles as it applied to developing their new product line.  The product was an embedded strand process control unit. This unit would control older […]

Models are not new, and neither models in the employ of product development. Product development has always had some basis in discovery and always will. If everything had such a high degree of certainty, likely the product or endeavor has already been done. Developing new things ceaselessly brings questions. To be effective, we want to answer these questions as quickly and as certainly as possible.

By Wally Stegall and Jon M Quigley Collecting and Reporting Material One approach to collecting and reporting material content is the International Material Data System (IMDS).  IMDS is a computer-based material data system used and funded primarily by automotive OEM’s (Original Equipment Manufacturer of cars, trucks, heavy vehicles, agricultural equipment, construction equipment, industrial equipment, military […]

By Kim Robertson and  Jon M Quigley When you think of product design and development what comes first to mind? Is it an understanding of our business objectives (scope) followed by functional decomposition of requirements and allocating them to various systems and subsystems to achieve that objective? Is it design to manufacture with designers, facility […]

With fifth dimension testing, we use techniques more commonly employed by the “bad guys.” For example, we may execute techniques such as: Fuzzing Response modification using genetic algorithms Input breakdown Overflows Underflows This approach allows for evolution of our test collection. We can automate a significant number of these tests if we have a comprehensive, […]

            Extreme testing occurs when we deliberately “torture” both the hardware and software to see what happens under undesirable conditions. Some examples of extreme testing include: Random voltages within the allowable voltage boundaries Voltage slews Deliberately introduced random noise on the data bus Extremely high bus loading (over 80% and sometimes over 90%) to see […]

        Stochastic testing occurs when we allow a reasonably well-seasoned test engineer to go with their “gut” and feel their way about the product’s performance. During the development of numerous embedded automotive products, we have seen stochastic testing elicit roughly the same amount of test failures as combinatorial testing. We are not recommending that stochastic testing […]

I know this is way off topic; however I thought we should post this. Below is a letter my brother and I sent to the Veterans Administration. Our father was in the Special Forces and served multiple tours in Vietnam.  The US has been in wars for decades now, and we do not know the […]

Requirements are fundamental to project success as the scope definition.  Additionally, there are dependencies that impact the ability to produce suitable requirements.  A few of those things are: Well defined scope of the work Sponsor and customer involvement Capability of the requirements authors Prioritized functions or abilities The needs or objectives of the customers or […]