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 one for the project.

There are several tools to define:

• The software 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 effective development
• The hardware development tools
• The hardware development platform
• Archival tools (Revision Control System)
• Test setup
  • Software tests
  • Hardware tests
  • Integration tests

Why

The correct tool is essential for the developer to work effectively. A suitable tool removes the focus from the tool and moves it to solve the problem at hand.

It can be dangerous to let the available tools define the technical platform because it might lead to a less effective process progress. On the other hand a development department may already have a selection of tools at hand and are confident using them in the daily work. Selecting new tools must necessarily reflect in extra time for introducing the new tool into the development team.