Re: Pratt & Whitney's Embedded Software - CMM Level 3!

[Marin David Condic <condicma@bogon.pwfl.com>]

Mike_jr@nospam wrote:
> 
> good job!
> 
> btw, What source control software do you use?  CVS? clear case? (please
> do not say Visual source safe).
> 
> Most companies I worked for where at CMM level -20 when it comes to
> software configuration management and things of this sort.
> 
People are going to think I hired a shill so I could pat myself on the
back...

The source code control (and the whole kit & kaboodle) was home grown. A
large chunk of this effort was done under my design. That's why I'm
proud of having played a big part in getting us a Level 3 certification.

To briefly (I hope) describe the nature of the beast...

A bunch of years ago we had the idea of building a diagram drawing tool
for control laws diagrams which could store information in such a way
that we could build a "picture compiler" to translate the diagrams to
source code. (Hence the "Pictures-To-Code" name - although its a lot
more than that now.) There was no commercial product that came close
enough to meet our needs, so the compiler ended up home grown. (That,
and some politics came into play! ;-) Surrounding this idea, we got
ambitious and decided that all the diagrams should be assembled in
documents to meet Mil-Std-2167a requirements - hence a full-up editing
system was born. Beyond that, all documents (requirements, design, etc.)
needed to be pulled together into a "system" so that we could
automatically build the code, build the document set, etc. and preserve
all the artifacts.

From there, a system needed to fall under configuration management and
change control, so the concept expanded even further. A system could be
baselined and a new one started from there. Any user could submit a
change request against a system and the whole flow of the CR was
automated - right to the point of being able to identify every artifact
that was impacted by the CR and every CR that went into changing a
particular version of a system or document.

What it all meant was that we had laid the groundwork in software to
support an entire process from start to finish which was a) written
down, b) repeatable, and c) provided monitoring of the process for
continuous improvement. We didn't know anything at the time about CMM
because - I think - it didn't quite exist yet. (We're talking about 1989
when this whole thing got started). It was a fortuitous turn of events
that had the great minds at CMU thinking exactly like the great minds at
Pratt & Whitney. :-)

After quite some time flogging everyone into adopting our process and
gradually improving and increasing the automation, folks began to come
around and see that we really had something here. We've got metrics
dating back to the start of the project which have shown consistent
improvement of productivity and reduction of defects. The whole effort
has been a long and gradual improvement, but in the end, it got us the
Level 3 certification and, more importantly, a safer, more reliable
product at a lower cost.

Thanks for asking!

MDC
-- 
Marin David Condic
Real Time & Embedded Systems, Propulsion Systems Analysis
United Technologies, Pratt & Whitney, Large Military Engines
M/S 731-95, P.O.B. 109600, West Palm Beach, FL, 33410-9600
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