IPPD, complex electronic systems and distributed design teams: a user perspective

The engineering of complex electronic systems presents many substantial challenges. Modeling, simulation and analysis of complete systems (hardware and software) are often quite difficult and often beyond the computational capability of typical workstation-based design environments. Of equal difficulty, however, are the challenges of project management and team communication and coordination since such a system evolves from concept to finished product. This paper presents a few brief observations about these real-world project management and communication challenges followed by a few thoughts on how they might be successfully overcome