People and Training are often not considered  for the entire product life during the initial project planning of a new product effort.  This too is a fatal flaw. 

When a project is planned the entire life cycle cost needs to be considered, including updates and follow on products.  It is only by taking a more global view that costs, time and risks can be minimized for an organization.  These costs will include the cost of training new personel to work on the project dependent upon the duration.  It should also include the cost of recruiting knowledgable new people as often the existing employees are not available or the best choice for the project.

One of the key limitations of custom software is that any new member of the team must learn it.  This learning takes time.  In the past, famous quotes have been created as a result of this learning including: "adding people to a late software project makes it later"  which is known as Brook's Law. 

How can we avoid this problem?  One key approach is to use Lean Product Development and a platform based approach along with a well known platform.   The benefit is that we can now recruit and avoid training for a significant portion of the software or embedded system.  This substantailly reduces the costs associated with turnover on the project.

For MCU and SoC based projects, this means avoiding that single loop of control and the spagetti  code that it creates over time.  By eliminating the single loop of control and using a pthread model,  the software becomes modular with well known and understood communication and synchronization points.  An expert is now easy to recruit and can learn the core system in a matter of minutes.

By thinking ahead about the People and Training costs, time and risk you can improve your OEM project results substantailly.

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