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18-545: ADVANCED DIGITAL DESIGN PROJECT
FALL 2016
BRANDON LUCIA
PLANNING,
MANAGEMENT, AND
EVALUATION
18-545: FALL 2016
Product Development Steps
Concept
Refinement
Realization
Production
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PLANNING
18-545: FALL 2016
Today’s Talk
Planning
Managing yourself and others
Tools and automation
Design advice
Metrics and Evaluation
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18-545: FALL 2016
Planning
Planning step is critical (“If you fail to plan, you are
planning to fail...”)
Planning: determining tasks / timescale /
resources needed to accomplish the project goals
Sets the tone for the rest of the design
Plan now, save time later
Experience with poor planning teaches good
planning
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18-545: FALL 2016
Plan of Record
Define your PoR, even if it may change
Eliminate ambiguity: ambiguity contributes to failure
Tolerate revision: Some decisions will be wrong
Prioritize: Spend time on what matters, not what is easy.
Document your PoR: written plans stick.
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18-545: FALL 2016
Plan like a Realist
Be Concrete: If you don’t plan
for it, it (probably) won’t get done
“If we have time, we’ll do X”;
almost never happens
Face challenges: Ignoring
issues makes them worse!
Late changes break more
Surprise changes can torpedo
your project.
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18-545: FALL 2016
“One must imagine Sisyphus happy”-A lbe r t Camus , The Myth o f S i syphus
Pragmatism rules: Some work is
fun, some is painful, all is needed
Design to the Goal:
What is interesting?
What will you demo?
What must you test?
What is the “falling boulder”?
What can you cut (if no time)?
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18-545: FALL 2016
Planning and Design
Planning is design; design is planning
Specification
Partitioning
Tools
Schedule
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18-545: FALL 2016
Specification
Define success early: over-
engineering wastes valuable time
Define the what:
Features, power,
performance, cost
Define the how:
Partitioning, implementation,
and interfaces
Test for success: metrics allow
comparison to success
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18-545: FALL 2016
Partitioning
Modular decomposition
Software
Workstation
Embedded CPU (e.g., ARM)
Soft CPU (e.g., MicroBlaze)
Hardware
FPGA + core configs
Peripherals on/off-board
Divide hardware into major blocks
Computation, Memory, Control
Most projects naturally decompose
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18-545: FALL 2016
Scheduling Aids
Gantt Chart
Only useful if living
“Density” represents
parallelism; “width”
represents sequentiality
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18-545: FALL 2016
“…never let go [of your Gantt Chart]”- R o s e D e w i t t B u k a t e r C a l v e r t , T i t a n i c
Schedule realistically
Plan how long things take, not
how long you want them to take
Plan slop time
Design Review
Surface “lost” problems
Near RTL completion time
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18-545: FALL 2016
Schedule (3)
Maintain the schedule: Past performance predicts future
Evidence-based Scheduling: everyone has a "time constant”
Team Scheduling
Some teammates need more/less ramp-up time
Some have other commitments (classes,quals,job)
Some are busy and/or apathetic
Accountability to schedule is key
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18-545: FALL 2016
Prepare for Schedule Slip
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Precipitous slope of
surprising success
Shallow grade
of realism
Plateau of Inaction
Quicksand of failure
Tim
e re
mai
nin
g
Time Deadline
18-545: FALL 2016
“No [person] is an island [except Kevin Costner
in 1995 cinematic masterpiece Waterworld]”- John Donne , Devo t ions upon Emergen t Occas ions , 1624
You cannot succeed in 18-545 alone
Coordination is work: but worth it.
Teammates cannot read your mind
Communication is key
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18-545: FALL 2016
" I have a bad back," Fosbury said af ter h is v ic tory, "and I lost a b ig patch of
sk in on the back of my lef t heel . Then I t r ipped on some stone steps the other
day and stra ined a l igament in my r ight foot. I guess I use posi t ive th inking.
Every t ime I approach the bar I keep te l l ing mysel f , ' I can do i t , I can do i t . ' “- ” F e a r l e s s ” D i c k F o s b u r y , I n v e n t o r o f t h e F o s b u r y F l o p , 1 9 6 8
Clarity in Goals: you and your
teammates agree on deliverables
Record in the schedule
Be strict: (with yourself and your
teammates)
Uniformity: All held to a standard
Excellence: All hold a high standard
Ambition: All strive to hit the standard
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Standards so high, you’ll Fosbury Flop
18-545: FALL 2016
Work Together
Organize Regular Meetings
“Sequential” meetings increase later “parallelism”
Share solutions and tips
Meetings are deceptively necessary
Golden Rule: Don’t be a bad teammate.
Be the way you want your teammates to be
Do quality work on time
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18-545: FALL 2016
Design Pitfalls
Special cases (add complexity)
Regularity and standardization are good
Overly clever, under smart
Over-engineering the sub-blocks at expense of the system
Need to do both top-down and bottom-up design
Hacking at problems
Design through iteration can be bad
Stop, pop-up, rethink
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18-545: FALL 2016
How Not to Plan a Project
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18-545: FALL 2016
How Not to Plan a Project
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18-545: FALL 2016
How to fail?
Do not maintain, stick to, continuously revise your schedule.
Take on too much, over-deliver where unnecessary, ignore time
Work alone, do not communicate, stay at home, write nothing down
Never test, assume it works, commit without docs, dedicate most
time to “technical purity”
Do not anticipate surprise, do not change plans ever, be stubborn
Stay home on demo day
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