Random Ramblings on LabVIEW Design

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Let's Talk Technical Accounting

swatts
Active Participant

Hello My Bug-Destroying-Bean-counters,

Hope all is well, I have about 5 half-written articles, so like a typical programmer I will start a completely new one.

 

Technical Debt

Technical Debt is now a fairly common term and it's a great metaphor for describing the process of accruing implied cost in a project due to not choosing a better approach that may initially take more effort. So from a design perspective an example would be rushing into programming with little investment in time.

 

To mitigate against technical debt you should make some Technical Investments.

 

Technical Investments

This is time (and money) spent building your tool-set, process and skills. The reward from this work will be your Technical Assets

 

Technical Assets

For us it's our process, our re-use framework templates, our documentation, our methodology, hardware designs and any re-use components we have. It can also be our training and experience.

In a pure and ideal world (like can be observed in presentations, books and keynotes), these assets come at no cost and lot's of benefit. In the real world there is usually a technical tax to pay.

 

Technical Tax

This term came from a conversation Fabiola had with someone at a party, I liked it so much I stole it! I don't go to parties so miss out on this type of conversation.

Every design decision will have a cost associated with it. You will sacrifice ease-of-use for functionality, flexibility for simplicity and so-on. Every decision has a positive and negative affect. The key is to pick the assets that improve the things that benefit you at the lowest rate of technical tax.

An example of this would be in choosing a framework. The framework will have advantages, but the cost will often be in bloat, difficulty in debugging, lack of understanding, performance. The design decision will then be:- is this taxation too high to realise the benefits?

 

Can we push this analogy further?

 

In other news GDevCon#2 place and time has been announced in Birmingham, UK in 21st, 22nd August 2019. Balti triangle here I come! eCLA Summit in Krakow from 2nd April 2019 and I've submitted 2 presentations for NIWeek (plus hopefully my code will be in the exhibition hall).

Lot's of Love

Steve

 

Steve


Opportunity to learn from experienced developers / entrepeneurs (Fab,Joerg and Brian amongst them):
DSH Pragmatic Software Development Workshop


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