Similarities and Differences Between Software and Hardware

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Hardware vs. Software Development: Similarities and Differences

We all know what Agile is and what software development means, and so permit'southward start past defining what we hateful past hardware and hardware development.

"Hardware" refers specifically to electrical or electro-mechanical devices, which often comprise firmware or embedded software. For instance, networking equipment, phones, and other communications technology; consumer electronics; computers; medical devices; ASICs (Application-Specific Integrated Circuits), and so along.

Similarly, "hardware development" is taken to mean the development of designs for devices that are intended to exist manufactured.).

Similarities between Hardware and Software Development

• They have behavior: Users interact with the products in various ways, products interact with other products, and products produce outputs given inputs
• They have functional (user-facing) and non-functional (not-user-facing) requirements
• They are complex: Whatsoever representation of product specifications invariably leads to a tree structure, every bit major features are decomposed into finer-grained features

Differences between Hardware and Software Development

• • Software is easier to change than hardware. The cost of change is much higher for hardware than for software.
  • Software products evolve through multiple releases by adding new features and re-writing existing logic to support the new features. Hardware products consist of physical components that cannot exist "refactored" subsequently manufacturing, and cannot add new capabilities that require hardware changes.
  • Designs for new hardware is frequently based upon earlier-generation products, merely commonly rely on adjacent-generation components not even so nowadays.
  • Hardware designs are constrained by the demand to comprise standard parts.
  • Specialized hardware components tin can take much longer lead times for acquisition than is true for software.
  • Hardware blueprint is driven past architectural decisions. More of the architectural piece of work must be done up front compared to software products.
  • The cost of development for software products is relatively flat over fourth dimension. Nevertheless, the cost of hardware development rises rapidly towards the cease of the development cycle. Testing software usually requires developing thousands of exam cases. Hardware testing involves far fewer tests.
  • Software testing is done by specialized Quality Assurance (QA) engineers, while hardware testing is commonly done by the engineers who are creating the product.
  • Hardware must exist designed and tested to work over a range of fourth dimension and environmental conditions, which is not the example for software.
  • Hardware development incorporates four parallel, synchronized projects:

ane) The detailed design of the manufacturable product
2) the manufacturing procedure and tooling
three) the test and inspection procedure and equipment; and
4) the supply concatenation for purchased parts.

In software development, the detailed design is the product, and production deployment consists of moving the product into a context where it can be used.

Due to many of the above factors, information technology is possible to make major changes in direction for a planned software-product upgrade in mid-development, without massive disruption and waste. Attempts to make such changes in hardware development come at a much higher cost, in terms of sunk costs wasted, and shipping schedules postponed. As a result, major changes must either be deferred to a future product upgrade, or are done when an cess is made that the touch is justified past the magnitude of the benefits.

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Kevin Thompson

Kevin has a doctorate in Physics from Princeton Academy, and an extensive background in managing software development projects. He specializes in training individuals, teams, and organizations in agile evolution.

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