Hardware Reference
In-Depth Information
manage safety-critical complexity with the best of intentions. Notice the locks? Each one
is a mandatory review point. You may not be making a medical device or a system that
needs to pass CE Mark safety certification, but you're still taking plenty of business risks
whenever your goal is to ship hardware. At these review steps, spend time to take a long,
hard look at your project and your progress to date. Invite others to review your design,
and make sure everything looks good before you graduate to the next step. One common
criticism of the waterfall workflow is that you have to go through the entire process before
you iterate. In reality, it's the spirit that you want to follow. It's never too early to ask
whether your design-in-progress will meet the target goals, and only solid and tested
designs should move on to production.
(Source: CC-BY-SA Amanda Wozniak)
Figure 5.1
Waterfall Model of Product Development.
Iterative Design and Concept Refinement
A good idea is just the beginning. In the previous section, we pretended every hacker and
maker would have enough information to be able to make a winning product definition,
just from a starting idea. That wasn't very nice. To help you decide exactly what to make,
here are some leading questions that will give you a place to start (so that you can get down
to the business of
how
you're going to make something and make it
profitably
):
