Development Plan
1. Product & Releases, evolution (Time line)
2. Features roll out
3. System architecture
4. Make buy decision
5. Technology selection
6. Resources (Lab, Organization)
7. Product cost, R&D cost
8. Technology & development Risk & mitigation plan
9. Development processes
10. Product verification & QA strategy.
11. Project plan
12. Customer Engagement plan
13. Manufacturing support plan
14. Multi-release concurrent development
15. Customer support & product sustaining
16. Intellectual Property & protection
3 February 2002 96.503 Issues in Telecommunications Sami Aly 1
Product Releases
1. Vision vs. releases
2. Example:
Sonus: Vision is Packet voice network evolution
Money generating release1: Internet offload
3. Reasons for multiple releases
1. Early revenue
2. Customer engagement
3. Risk mitigation
4. Gaining market mindset
5. Fund raising
4. Disadvantages
1. Inefficient development and operation
2. Managing concurrent multiple releases
3 February 2002 96.503 Issues in Telecommunications Sami Aly 2
Development plan (cont)
1. Releases Time line
1. High level release dates
1. Requirement, design, alpha, Beta, GA
2. Driver for each release (customer engagement, revenue, profit,
volume)
3. Migration plan
4. Highlight the accuracy of the projected dates
2. Features roll out
3. System architecture
1. Platform vs. single-function
2. Product evolution
3. Visible interfaces, modularity
3 February 2002 96.503 Issues in Telecommunications Sami Aly 3
Make Buy Decision
• Options for product development
1. Developed internally
2. Jointly develop a component with a partner & integrate in your
product
3. Contract its development outside (custom design) & integrate in your
product
4. Buy as finished-goods component & integrate in your product
5. License its use as a finished goods & integrate in your product
6. OEM as a finished goods & system-integrate in your product
3 February 2002 96.503 Issues in Telecommunications Sami Aly 4
Partnership rule
• Understand your competitive strength
• Build ROI-centric and low-empire building mindset
• Services are available outside your company
• Employee satisfaction if they work on mission critical stuff
• For every partnership decision, (In-source vs. outsource):
– In-source the tasks with the highest ROI and lowest risk
– Questions to ask:
• How much investment for In-source
• How much return ROI
• Is it my core competencies (likely to succeed ; RISK)
• Size of the task and ease of partnership and integration
• Critical dependency on the target task
• Criterion
– Product cost
– R&D Cost economics
– Availability
– Core competency
– Time to market
– Performance
3 February 2002 96.503 Issues in Telecommunications Sami Aly 5
Technology selection
• Major Technologies that critically impact
• product cost
• development cost
• risk
• Their selection enables many other decisions to be made
• Lab
• recruiting
• Examples:
• Operating systems
• CPU
• Protocol stacks
• Board to board communication
• Circuit assembly
• ASIC vs. FPGA vs. off the shelf
• Tightly coupled to system architecture
3 February 2002 96.503 Issues in Telecommunications Sami Aly 6
Development Organization
• Organization Strength
• Design, SW, HW, architecture, program execution
• Organization track record
• Infrastructure support staff requirement
• Tools, Lab tech, load build, mechanical, IT
• Labs requirement
• H/W & S/W Development, Product verification & Alpha
•Design tool
• Source code control, schematic capture, simulation,..
• Team history through complete development cycles
• Team adherence to Process (documentation and reviews)
• Organization structure
- Inter organization group (inter hardware, inter software)
- Inter division (inter development)
- Cross functional group
3 February 2002 96.503 Issues in Telecommunications Sami Aly 7
Product Cost
• Consists of
– Electronic components
– PCB & connectors
– Power unit
– Package (box, screws, bezels, cooling unit)
– Software license
– Package, data sheet
– Manufacturing
• assembly, component handling, test, overhead
• Manufacturing Yield and impact on cost
– Repair
– Yield improvement
• Cost reduction
– Procurement
– Design
3 February 2002 96.503 Issues in Telecommunications Sami Aly 8
Risk Management
• Sources of Risk
– Technology Risk
• Un-expected performance
– New immature components (released unreported bugs, poor QA, poor doc)
– Use components in new untested applications
• Lack of understanding
– Design too complicated to understand & manage (try and error)
– Miss understanding for components’ capabilities
– Management Risk
• Suppliers, partners fulfilling their commitment
• Big project management
• Team performance
• Mitigation
– Prototyping, simulation 1. Create culture
2. Identify
– Emphasis on front end work
3. Quantify
– Matching human skill to complexity
4. Mitigate
– Plan B 5. Integrate in your plan
3 February 2002 96.503 Issues in Telecommunications Sami Aly 9
Development Process
• Development processes
1. Why needed
1. Communication
2. Mixed skill-level team
3. Repeatability
4. Quality
2. Why not
1. Overhead if added after the fact
2. Overhead if not accepted
3. Overhead . . Period . . .
3. How much do you need for each phase of the development
team
3 February 2002 96.503 Issues in Telecommunications Sami Aly 10
Development Backend
• Product Verification
– Functional
– Conformance
– Environmental
– Alpha
• Manufacturing support plan
– In-source vs. outsource
– Procurement
– Component Obsolescence
– Test program development
– Yield improvement
3 February 2002 96.503 Issues in Telecommunications Sami Aly 11
Development (cont.)
1. Customer Engagement plan
2. Multi-release concurrent development
3. Customer support & product sustaining
1. Not most attractive task for some engineers
2. It can be the make / break to keep customer loyalty
3. Good means to understand customer requirement
4. Separation or not of organization between new product development and
sustaining
5. Key thing is not to be surprised after the fact
6. Plan for it: organizational, financial, architectural
4. Intellectual Property & protection
1. Patent
1. Not to be stopped from using your property
2. To stop others from steeling from you
3. To collect royalty
2. Publication
3. Stay quite
4. Infringing on others’ IP
3 February 2002 96.503 Issues in Telecommunications Sami Aly 12