Designing and launching an embedded product is by no means an easy feat. At every turn, development teams are faced with challenges ranging from business and marketing all the way through the design and implementation of the actual product. Today’s development environment can be extremely challenging given the rapid pace at which technology is advancing including the growth of IoT and AI. In this series, we are going to look at the challenges facing teams that are looking to launch a product and explore the best practices teams need to be successful. We are going to mainly focus on the technical challenges and how to overcome them but will also touch on the business and marketing aspects that are required in order to be successful.

Registration and Playback located here (May require login to access)

November 18 – Day 1 – The Business of Product Development

We often have the mindset, “Build it and they will come,” but anyone who has started a business before knows that is the mantra for failure. In this session, we will examine the business side of development. Attendees will learn about the trade-offs that need to be made from a business perspective when starting a new product development effort. We will discuss business topics such as marketing, development costs, minimum viable products and how to start with something that can scale in the long run.

November 19 – Day 2 – Success through Design and Development Processes

One key factor that I have repeatedly seen in companies that successfully launch a quality product is that they take the time up front to put their design and development processes in place. In this session, we are going to explore design and development processes and how they can be applied to effectively develop a product without tying a developer’s hands, but also reeling in any “wild-west” efforts. Attendees will walk away with an understanding of what minimum techniques should be applied to product develop along with how to use processes to achieve consistent results.

November 20 – Day 3 – Scalability, Architectures and the Minimally Viable Product (MVP)

There is often a bug among entrepreneurs to build a complex, feature rich product on the first pass. Unfortunately, these entrepreneurs are trying to design the third or fourth iteration of the product the first time and that can result in delays to market, cost overruns and even the business failing. In this session, we are going to discuss how we can design and build a minimally viable product with the right architecture in place that allows the product to easily scale in the field and in future revisions.

November 21 – Day 4 – Achieving Quality and Reasonable Time-to-Market

There is often a trade-off between cost, time-to-market and quality that needs to be balanced. While some would argue this relationship no longer exists, I see the trade-offs time and again. In this session, we are going to discuss what it means to develop a quality product which includes defining what quality is, how it is measured and how we can go about balancing quality with other product development drivers.

November 22 – Day 5 – Techniques for Accelerating Time to Market

The modern development cycle is often short on time and budgets which leaves developers scrambling. Developers who are scrambling often make mistakes which just exacerbates the problem. In this session, we are going to examine modern techniques for accelerating time to market. Attendees will discuss how to leverage microcontroller platforms, open source software, the cloud, machine learning and several other tools to speed up development. We will also discuss tools and resources that teams can leverage in their quest. 

Course Resources

Jacob’s General Embedded System Resources

• Sign-Up for the Embedded Bytes Newsletter here
• Embedded Software Design Techniques – An API Standard for MCU’s here
• Developing Reusable Firmware – A Practical Guide to API’s, HAL’s and Drivers here
• Doxygen C Templates Download can be here
• DesignNews Blog Articles can be found here
• Jacob’s YouTube Channel – here