GTV is released in six-month increments (i.e. two releases per year). Every release contains the software for all past and present hardware. This makes it very important to be backward compatible. In fact, backward compatibility is the first of a set of golden rules that must be obeyed by all GTV developers. During nightly builds, this backward compatibility is tested. If for some reason backward compatibility cannot be maintained, then it should be noted very clearly in the release notes.

It would be most convenient for the GTV developers if customers were eager to adopt new releases. In practice, customers have their software working on an old release of GTV, and are very reluctant to port their software to a new release (which in theory should be simple, but in practice is always more complicated than anticipated). As a consequence, multiple releases of GTV need to be maintained over time.

As explained above, it is crucial to have professional support on the drivers and platform, as this software is delivered as a black-box. Problems found by a customer should be solved the same day. Moreover, customers should be convinced before they buy the ICs that they will get immediate response to their problems. This was a challenge initially, but customers soon learned that NXP would indeed respond in time. Customers also appreciated NXP for their system knowledge.

An interesting aspect of adoption is the way that customers can incrementally start to use the GTV product line. Even though the product line is already there, a customer may decide to adopt the product line ‘library by library’, i.e. one library at the time, while using their own software for the remaining part. This decreases the risks of adoption, and helps to get experienced in the software product line step by step.

Organization

As explained above, it took 10 years and several attempts to get a successful software product line up and running. The effort spent during this period was (roughly) 150 person years. The current GTV software product line was set-up in 2000 and started running in 2003. This took over 100 person years. Since 2003, a dedicated group of 30-50 people was responsible for developing and supporting the product line. Effort distribution was roughly 50% on development and 50% on support (both helpdesk and on-site). Currently, there is still a significant team that actively supports GTV.

< Previous page . . 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 . . Next page >