Selecting Technical Platform

What

Selection of a suitable technical platform for development.

How

The dish

Selection of a suitable technical platform for development.

Ingredients

• General Analysis artefacts

Process

From the requirements and constraints and in parallel with the design process, the developer shall consider the necessary development tools and select the appropriate ones for the project.

There are several tools to define:

• The SW development tools
  • Programming language
  • Compiler and related tools
  • Development platform (PC or other platform)
  • The Operating System to run on the hardware enabling the software to execute
  • Libraries and components that will enable rapid and efficient development
• The HW development tools
• The HW development platform
• Archival tools (revision control system)
• Test set-up
  • SW tests
  • HW tests
  • Integration tests

Why

The proper tool is essential for the developer to work efficiently. A suitable tool removes the focus from the tool and to solving the problem at hand.

It can be dangerous to let the available tools define the technical platform because it might lead to a less efficient progress during the process. On the other hand, a development department may already have a selection of tools available and is confident using these in the daily work. Selecting new tools will undoubtedly require extra time when introducing the new tool to the development team.