Firmware Development Process

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In electronic systems and computing, firmware is a term often used to denote the fixed, usually rather small, programs and/or data structures that internally control various electronic devices. As with any design development, the firmware must undergo validation and verification testing to ensure the controller and the system performance is safe, predictable and efficient. Thus Firmware Development is important for any product.

PCB layouts were typically done by placing pads down on clear vellum and connections made between pads with black tape of various widths. While the printed circuit boards were being laid out, prototype circuits were built using point-to-point wiring or wire-wrapping techniques, a long and tedious task. There is no common understanding of what an embedded system is, even though a number of different definitions exist. However, it is common in books about the subject to describe systems like air traffic control systems or space shuttles. To differentiate from this image the term firmware is used in this paper to mean the lowest level of system programming. Firmware development places some unique challenges to software development, but most of the problems are familiar from other areas of software as well. Common problems include frequently changing requirements, fast time-to-market and high quality requirements. These problems are tackled with agile methods. In this chapter the compatibility of agile methods and firmware development is analyzed. The characteristics of a firmware project are that they are programmable logic and development tool to the coding process and are often designed by a single person.