Goal-Driven Development Method for Managing Embedded System Projects: An Industrial Experience Report

Technologies and methods for the development of embedded system projects are highly constrained by predefined hardware and software platforms. In this sense, embedded system projects may have more goals (derived from constraints) to achieve than regular software projects. Without pragmatic support, engineers from different disciplines are likely to neglect some project goals in the real-world embedded system projects. As a consequence, the success of embedded system projects may be more difficult to achieve than regular software projects. In this paper we report experiences gained during applying a goal driven project management methodology on several embedded system projects in a software company. We evaluated the effectiveness and efficiency of our Goal-Driven Development (GDD) methodology in practice by both projects results and feedbacks from relevant stakeholders. The results of our study show that GDD enables embedded system project teams to systematically and effectively identify, understand, track, and ultimately realize the project goals to meet relevant stakeholders´ expectations. Being supported by GDD, explicit linkages and assignments are established between goals and solutions with project team´s commitments.