Shows
Mastering Embedded SystemsThe man with the "Leadership Mind" - Bernd Geropp - MES054The man with the "Leadership Mind" - Bernd Geropp - MES054
2017-06-2000 min2017-04-1800 min2017-04-0400 min2016-12-2000 minMastering Embedded Systems3 pickings from ESE-Kongress 2016 - MES050The ESE-Kongress in Sindelfingen. More than 1.300 participants! 100 presentations! 3 days with 4 streams in parallel! Amazing!
The German Embedded Software Engineering Kongress is the second largest gathering of Embedded specialists in Europe. I gave my debut presentation with "No belly-flops with virtual teams". But there are about 100 other presentations in 4 parallel streams on three days. From 29th, November until 1st, December people belonging to the Embedded realm has their gathering in Sindelfingen. It's a great happening with interesting persons presenting stunning talks, new topics and detailed insights.
2016-12-0600 minMastering Embedded Systems9 surprisingly simple tips to improve your communcation - MES049You were misunderstood.
Although you have spent a lot of effort to be precise and clear. But nevertheless somehow your counterpart has horribly misunderstood you. And now you're in big trouble. Perhaps your spouse interpreted your "Nice" for the new dress as inadequate. Or there was this tone of desinterest in your voice. Or you just run into this ugly problem at work and your mind is still in the office. You all remember what happens after such situation. Something has gone wrong. How can we avoid such kind of situation?
Everything we say OR not say, everything we do...
2016-11-2200 minMastering Embedded SystemsSay YES to your pain and step out of your Comfort Zone - MES048It's a pity.
That most of us find their best time in staying in their Comfort Zone. In this hammock of our regular habits. Full of cosy feelings, thoughts and emotions. Of course, we all have our regular habits, the routins. In the morning in the bathroom or in the evening going to bed. We also follow our inner boosters telling us to be perfect, punctual, or push ourselves and hurry up. But it's really sad, that we regularly get stuck in this zone.
Our Comfort Zone is supposed to keep our life safe. But what it really does is...
2016-11-0800 minMastering Embedded SystemsAvoid managing your time - MES047This is the first episode of my mini-series "Improve Yourself". This series is based on the results of my last survey on my podcast listeners. We'll start today with the episode of Time-Management.
Is it really possible to manage time? To do Time-Management? I do not think so. Because time is something we cannot impact or manipulate. The only thing we can do is to change our way to experience time passing by.
And this change of perspective drops away all these usual Time-Management tools, books, courses, hints and tricks. But you get confronted with yourself. Everybody of us lives...
2016-10-2500 minMastering Embedded SystemsIt's a shame that you do not make the best out of your root cause analysis - MES046Do you have ever thought about the aftermath for your root cause analysis? What should be done if you have found real cause of your problem? What do you regularly do after you have made your correction?
By the way - do you know whether your correction really corrects the problem? That it only corrects the problem? And does not introduce a ton of new problems?
In this episode it's all about what's coming after the problem's analysis.
2016-10-1100 minMastering Embedded SystemsTech-Chat: How to maintain derailed projects with Maik Pfingsten - MES045Sometimes people ask me: "What's that about project troubleshooting? What does it mean? What are you guys doing? Who does anybody need this kind of stuff? And what's the benefit at the end?" I want to provide some answers on these question. I have invited a friend of mine, who has done this kind of work for roughly ten years. Maik Pfingsten is an elaborated engineer, a versatile project leader and he has saved a lot of projects under rough conditions. He meanwhile works as mentor, speaker, author and coach for specific topics round about projects in trouble.
He tells...
2016-09-2700 minMastering Embedded Systems5 hacks to succeed in discussions with your vendor - MES044Right before my holiday I have made a bad experience. Some meetings with a vendor have gone sub-optimal to say the least.
There were several road blocks and nit-picking details which brought the meetings close to waste of time.
However it was a good opportunity to observe what could be done much more better when talking with vendors for technical problems. I have run a lot of such talks and I wanted to take this bad situation as trigger to collect my 5 hacks to get the most out of vendor discussions.
2016-09-1300 minMastering Embedded SystemsTech Chat: What QRAcorp can do for your requirements? - MES043Tech Chat: What QRAcorp can do for your requirements? - MES043
2016-08-3000 minMastering Embedded SystemsTech Chat: How tools can relief your pain in Requirements Engineering - MES042In episode #38 I have already had the pleasure to welcome Joachim Reinke. Joachim is an expert in requirements engineering. In episode 38 he explained the reasons why we definitely need requirements engineering.
And today I'm happy that we managed to continue our talk. We're discussing the big pain points in Requirements Engineering. And how it is possible to relief this pain. But we also needed to back up a little bit to grab the bigger picture.
First we identified the main points in Requirements Engineering. In a second step we jumped into the details how to select an appropriate tool to...
2016-08-1700 minMastering Embedded SystemsHow to Survive Death March Projects? (Part 2) - MES040And here we are with the third and last part of how to survive Death March Projects. In episode #37 we have talked about how to define and detect Death March projects. And about your decision whether to leave or stay.
In episode #39 we have tackled the kind of actions you will face if you want to bring such a project to a good end. We have talked about politics and negotiations. About rational negotiations and negotiation games you should know. And how to identify accetable trade-offs or what to do if all negotiations fail.
Episode #40 was about people. How to...
2016-08-0200 minMastering Embedded SystemsHow to Survive Death March Projects? (Part 2) - MES040In the last episode I have mentioned how important negotiations become in maintaining a Death March project. Today we're focussing on another aspect: How to gather the right people in your project?
Especially in Death March projects your surrounding team mates might become the only persons you see for a very long time. Insist on having the right persons in your team. Expect overtime hours, but remember always that you've a long way to go. And at the very end you should have enough power to sprint for the last 100 meters.
Taking care for people is an essential part to...
2016-07-1900 minMastering Embedded SystemsHow to Survive Death March Projects? (Part 1) - MES039Hopefully you guys remember Episode 37 Hopefully you guys remember episode 37. We talked about Death March projects. How to identify them. What their characteristics are. The reasons they happen. And about your decision to stay for them.
Episode 37 was the introduction. This new episode starts to emphasize the four major aspects how to survive a Death March project. In this context surviving more means to stay psychologially unharmed than physically shattered. Regularly these four aspects appear in certain combinations. That's the reason you need to know all four of them to get the whole picture.
Today I will present you the...
2016-07-0500 minMastering Embedded SystemsTech Chat: Why you need requirements with Joachim Reinke - MES038"We do not need specificiation because our product is its own specification!" You know such kind of statements? You suffer from such kind of attitudes? Then you're exactly right in this tech-chat with Joachim Reinke.
Joachim is an elaborated specialist for such kind of hassle. He is an engineer who specialized in the area of Requirements Engineering. He's a crack in this area of the development and production process. We both got acquainted at the systems camp 2016 in Berlin.
Requirements engineering refers to defining, documenting and maintaining requirements to the sub-fields of systems engineering and software engineering. But the major...
2016-06-2100 minMastering Embedded SystemsWhat are Death March Projects? (Intro) - MES037Already at the very beginning of this podcast, in episode 5 I have talked about projects in problems. In this former episode I have talked about the warning signs if your project runs into trouble.
Everybody of us has some kind of understanding the term "Death March". It's from the military indicating a task you have a good chance to not stay alive. And the same could be, if you take projects in civil life in which the project members are working 13-14 hours each day, 6-7 days per week, for months. There is a good chance to lose people. But...
2016-06-0700 minMastering Embedded SystemsTech Chat: Security in Embedded Systems - MES036You know such kind of story - everybody is talking about security, but not really everybody knows what it effectively means. Especially security in Embedded Systems has become a valid topic in the last years. My today's guest has an intimate knowledge about all kind of aspects of security for Embedded Devices. I wanted to welcome Andrey Nikishin from Kaspersky Labs.
Many of you will remember Kaspersky Labs as one of the main competitors in providing anti-virus software. However they have become much more. Andrey describes himself as evangelist of new technologies and new business directions. As an expert for...
2016-05-2400 minMastering Embedded Systems5 simple tweaks to use Mind-Maps for meeting minutes - MES035Taking minutes can be some real awkward story. But using Mind-Maps it gets more natural, more fluent, and more precise. But, doing it that way, I detected during running consecutive task-force meetings, that the Mind-Map approach is not that stringent. It needed some tweaks to get its real harmony and fluency. And this episode is about the five major tricks I have found during the last months when using Mind-Maps for taking meeting minutes.
2016-05-1000 minMastering Embedded SystemsTech Chat: Virtualization in Embedded Systems - MES034Today we're talking about Virtualization in Embedded Systems. This is particularly different from host-based virtualization. For that reason I wanted to welcome major experts in this special area: Baurzhan Ismagulov and Alexander Smirnov from Ilbers - Technology for better life.
Ilbers provides Mango - a bare-metal Type 1 hypervisor. If you do not understand a word what this means - jump back to the previous episode #33 of the MES-podcast Combining the Uncombinable and fill up your missing knowledge. Mango was nominated for the Embedded Award 2015 at the Embedded World exhibition in Nuremberg. They have created a great piece of software which...
2016-04-2600 minMastering Embedded SystemsVirtualization - Combining the Uncombinable - MES033Today's episode is an introduction episode. It's introducing into the topic of the next episode. We've tackling the big topic of Virtualization.
Virtualizing is in. Everybody, everythings seems to be in some way virtualized. But what does it really mean? At least in the context of IT it definitely means something different as in day-by-day usage. In this episode I'll give you the big overview and dive a little bit into some details. Details you should know when talking about virtualization on computer-systems.
2016-04-1200 minMastering Embedded SystemsDeadline Pressure - Seven artful ways to beat it - MES032Today I wanted to talk about deadline pressure. Everybody of us might have some experience with these special working conditions. There's a deadline - and you have to achieve it.
2016-03-2900 minMastering Embedded SystemsTech Chat: From SingleCore to MultiCore with Jeronimo Castrillon-Mazo - MES031Today it's up to Jeronimo Castrillon-Mazo. We got acquainted at the Embedded World 2016 in Nuremberg. He is co-founder and adviser at Silexica. They have won the Embedded Award 2015 in the Tools-category for SLX MultiCore Toolsuite. That drives me to visit their booth. Having an amazing talk I asked Jeronimo to appear in this podcast. Let's have some tech-chat, widen the topic and enlarge the audience for this interesting topic.
Jeronimo has studied Electrical Engineering in Colombia, achieved his Master-degree at ALaRI-institute in Lugano, Switzerland. He has made his Ph.D. 2013 at the well known RWTH Aachen. In 2014 Jeronimo joined the...
2016-03-1500 minMastering Embedded SystemsThe year starts with the Embedded World - MES030A short review about my visit to the Embedded World 2016 last week in Nuremberg. This episode is for all of you who haven’t had the chance to visit the Embedded World. I wanted to introduce you for a virtual walk. Join with me some interesting booths and see the big players
2016-03-0100 minMastering Embedded SystemsFind root causes with the Enhanced Cause-Effect approach - MES029In the first two sessions about root-cause-analysis I have introduced the 5-Whys and the Ishikawa techniques. Both have their pros and cons.
For a long time I was looking for a better way to provide root cause analysis. More sophisticated than the 5-Whys, but not that compilicated and elaborate as the Ishikawa. And hereby I come across with an enhanced version of the regular Cause-Effect approach.
It's again a graphical approach which combines simplicity and logic. It's especially useful for situations in which multiple goals are affected.
The way to evaluate root-causes using the enhanced cause-effect is my preferred way...
2016-02-1600 minMastering Embedded SystemsBoost your Logging - MES028Embedded Systems without logging is a pain. But with logging it's very often a desaster, too.
I wanted to present you my thoughts how to improve logging.
It's not for the super experts knowing everything and every detail of your system by heart. But it's for all the regular engineers out there who are facing a failing system. A system providing either nothing or an awful lot of superfluous information.
What if you would introduce an indicator describing the system's healthiness. Something what would highlight an immediate status of the system: healthy or unhealthy. Stable or unstable. Reliable or doomed.
...
2016-02-0200 minMastering Embedded SystemsEngineers' Talk: Riding Jenkins with Oleg Nenashev - MES027Today I'm happy to introduce you another presenter of the Embedded Testing conference in Munich. I got acquainted with Oleg Nenashev already in the first minutes of the conference. We're sitting aside of each other. He was working for his Jenkins presentation.
Oleg is a 27 year old engineer from St. Petersburg in Russia. Although he has started as a hardware-engineer he's mainly engaged on the software side. With his presentation Integrating Jenkins with verification flows of Embedded Systems he has introduced himself as Jenkins specialist. He's currently working for CloudBees in Neufchâtel in Switzerland.
Although I was in touch w...
2016-01-1200 minMastering Embedded SystemsWanted! Podcast Name - MES026Hi fellows, I wanted to welcome you in 2016. Hopefully you have survived all the holiday stress, the good food, the sometimes stressful family gatherings. And perhaps you have also taken your New Year's resolutions into mind and into heart.
I have done my homework - not fully, but most part of it.
25 episodes done; half of a year. Time for making a review. What has gone fine? What has gone wrong? Where is the direction? What was the feedback? Am I still on course?
These questions came into my mind during the last two weeks.
Today's episode is about all...
2016-01-0500 minMastering Embedded SystemsEngineers' Talk: HW- and SW-Integrator Jürgen Salm - MES025It's an ever lasting story in Embedded Systems: Integrate hardware and software. You need to combine a new piece of hardware together with new software. That's the time you need engineers like my today's guest - Jürgen Salm.
Jürgen has a proven track of experience as SW-developer. He's running his own zoo of Unix- and Linux-machines at his home-place. At work however he's engaged as SW-tester and mainly HW- and SW-integrator. Jürgen is working for one of the big mobile equipment manufacturers in Germany.
Jürgen is a constant source of ideas about improvement and he has tons...
2015-12-2200 minMastering Embedded SystemsMuda, Mura and Muri - Waste in SW-development - MES024I have recorded this episode twice. Not by intention - far away from that. But I was neither convinced nor satisfied with the first recording. Also the subject was not really impressive and I decided to do it again from scratch. Thus I got a first hand impression what waste of time and effort is. However one detail in the first record was amazing. It was about waste in SW-development.
You remember episode 4? Already there I have mentioned waste due to over-processing and over-engineering. Both are part of the 7 forms of regular waste in any kind of system.
The Toyota...
2015-12-1500 minMastering Embedded SystemsEngineers' Talk - DevOp and Tester Vassilis Rizopoulos - MES023I have mentioned the Embedded Testing conference in Munich in episode 20. One of the presentation was about "Applying DevOps Principles to Software-Hardware Integration Test". Vassilis Rizopoulus, naming himself as DevOp and Tester, explained further details, their tooling, automated testing and the mandatory environment.
I was excited and we have had an extraordinary talk after his contribution. Some days later I asked him for an interview. I am sure that Vassilis' ideas and thoughts will be helpful for a lot of engineers out there. Especially engineers who wanted to try something knew, but who might need some trigger to change their...
2015-12-0800 minMastering Embedded Systems15 amazing tips for your first BarCamp visit - MES022In episode 20 I have described the main differences between traditional conferences and the idea of BarCamps. In this session I wanted to give you my 15 for your BarCamp visit.
I have meanwhile joined several BarCamps. And I have made a lot of things wrong. Mainly because I was not aware of. Sometimes also I thought it is better done in another way. But there are a some main phases you are confronted with. And for all of them you can do things well and you do things much more better.
Starting into a BarCamp well prepared lets you enjoy the...
2015-12-0100 minMastering Embedded SystemsHow everything started - My way to the PDP-11 - MES021Holy moly, seems I'm getting old. Two times in the last two weeks I was confronted with the PDP-11. Things which are part of my experience are nostalgic for others. They have never seen or touched them. Never experienced in real life.
What has happened? One day I saw an update in LinkedIn highlighting DEC's PDP-11 as an old system. That's nothing extraordinary. It is old. But one of my colleagues mentioned it as nostalgic. Bumm, right in the face.
Second, I got a mail by another colleague. In his signature he mentioned that this mail was written from his...
2015-11-2400 minMastering Embedded SystemsWas your last conference poor? - MES020You know conferences. For sure you do. You might be a fan of them. Or even not. You might be even disappointed, as I am after visiting the Embedded Testing 2015 in Munich last week. Although I was invented as presenter, I was not convinced. I mean the topic was really good - no other conference or meeting available covering exactly this specific part in the Embedded Systems realm.
But the conference got stuck as a sponsor-driven event which highlights products over general knowledge, marketing over sharing of experience. One could have made a lot more out of this conference. So...
2015-11-1700 minMastering Embedded SystemsEngineers' Talk: Mr. Bug-Hunting Bero Brekalo - MES019Talking about bug-hunting has become a regular topic in this podcast. However there are tons of different persons out there using their own approach to handle bugs. All of them might have different attitudes, different approaches and different experiences. And it might be of interest to get more familiar with them and the details they can tell us.
Within today's episode we have Bero Brekalo as a guest for interview. Bero is one of my very first listeners not directly related to me. We got acquainted after release of Episode 2. We have had a long mail-discussion about debugging, our different...
2015-11-1000 minMastering Embedded SystemsHow to survive the email flood? - MES018Everybody has his limit in handling emails. For one 10 per day are too much, another handles 150 without any problems. But sooner or later, everybody of us have to declare: it's too much.
I have had a time in my life in which I have had to handle 750 mails per day in average. Nobody can say that this is possible to do. But that was the time I started a very strict and consequent filtering and categorization. However it still was too much. The combination of importance and urgency was back-breaking.
In the first part of this episode I will show...
2015-11-0300 minMastering Embedded SystemsEngineer's Talk: Soft-Errors with Michal Lewczyk - MES017Do you have ever heard about Soft-Errors? No, I do not mean Software-Errors. That's something completely different. I mean Soft in difference to Hard. I first time get into contact with Soft-Errors in late 2011 as we have observed a spontaneous reset within a customer's appliance. There was no indication for a reset-request, the system simply resetted.
Within some industries this is no case to be worried about. But in that time, in that type of industry, with this particular customer it was a challenge to find the root-cause of this spontaneous reset. And it was even more complicated to approve...
2015-10-2700 minMastering Embedded SystemsAftermath in a task-force - MES016In this episode I will give you further details and helpful hints how you can do all the aftermath in running and working with task-forces. You get a lot of details about how to provide meaningful and reliable meeting minutes. I provide you my experiences in doing minutes both, during and after the task-force meetings. Additionally you will also get my minutes template available for free at Google Docs. And last not least I will drop you my ideas about the retrospective you should have for each of your task-forces.
2015-10-2000 minMastering Embedded SystemsTask-Forcing extreme: Volkswagen and its Diesel problem - MES015In this episode I will give you my thoughts and considerations about the Volkswagen Diesel scandal. I wanted to highlight some of the obvious technical problems as some of the not that visible intrinsic issues. Where do we have seen this kind of cheating before? What could the customer expect? How will Volkswagen deal with the situation? A big amount of questions let me consider about some potential answers or thoughts how this could have happened, why it has happened and whether it is not that simple to resolve the problems.
2015-10-1300 minMastering Embedded SystemsFinding root-causes with Ishikawa - MES014This episode is the 2nd part of the root-cause mini-series. It has started with episode #9 and the 5-Whys technique. This time we get introduced into the Ishikawa-technique. It is a much more versatile approach which handles even more complicated problems with more than one root-cause. In detail the Ishikawa-technique is a simple as the 5-Whys. However it also has some problems and obstacles which you should know to use it on its best. This episode provides you an introduction in this graphical cause evaluation method.
2015-10-0600 minMastering Embedded SystemsEngineers' talk: Tools and Building with Robert Schiele - MES013In this episode you will learn a lot about building, maintaining and distributing tools and operating systems in large scale projects. With Robert Schiele a senior expert on all this kind of topics stays with me. We're talking about build-systems, root file systems, native and cross building. We tackle observable problems with distributed environments. We discuss about struggles with multiple hardware platforms. And we give you a close look into the way how well prepared tools-provisioning saves you time and prevents waste.
2015-09-2900 minMastering Embedded Systems6 ways to struggle with your explanations - MES011Complicated technical problems, defects, situations or environments often need some abstraction to be understood by outsiders. This episode give you 6 ways to fail with your explanation. But it also gives you six great ways how to become a 1st class insider providing exceptional explanations.
2015-09-1500 minMastering Embedded SystemsHow this podcast is produced - MES010This is the vacation episode. Recorded on my way to the beach of Moliets-et-Maa.
Moliets-et-Maa is a small village in south-west of France. It's situated close to the Atlantic sea. Roundabout 120 km south of Bordeaux and 50 kilometres north of Biarritz. It's a surfer's spot and offers a 9- and 18-hole golf course. We love it due to the great sea view, the wide beach and the lovely weather conditions.
It's also my 10th episode and therefore time for a short celebration. Hoorray. Okay, that's enough.
2015-09-0800 minMastering Embedded SystemsFinding root causes with 5-Whys - MES009Finding the real cause of a problem is like weeding your garden. Treating only the weed is useless effort if the root is not eradicated. The 5-Whys technique provides you a way to dig deeper, find the root cause of a problem. Although the technique is quite simple in its process, it has its tweaks and caveats which needs to be known. This episode gives you a first entry how to do the 5-Whys best. It give you an overview of the benefits, but also mentions the drawbacks. A step-by-step guide introduces the way how to do it in practice.
2015-09-0100 minMastering Embedded Systems3 mandatory actions to successfully launch a task-force - MES008Each task-force follows three different phases: launching, running and aftermath. This episode handles the first phase. Get 3 basic actions to succeed.
2015-08-2500 minMastering Embedded SystemsEngineers' talk: Internet of Things with Marcus Behrens - MES007Marcus Behrens is a wholehearted engineer and Product Design Director at SAP in Walldorf, Germany. We came into discussion at the IoT-TechDay in Frankfurt. He's not only one of the masterminds at SAP for IoT, but also an engaged engineer within Embedded Systems. This interesting combination triggered this talk. We're chatting about our experiences and impressions from the IoT-TechDay, the chances and risks we see in IoT and our future outlook for IoT in our daily environment.
2015-08-1800 minMastering Embedded Systems5 tips that your task-force gets successful - MES006This episode is the starting episode of a mini-series about how to establish and run a successful task-force. This episode gives you the overview about the advantages and disadvantages, the risks and chances of running task-forces. Get 5 tips how your task-force becomes successful.
2015-08-1100 minMastering Embedded SystemsHave you these symptoms of project problems? - MES005Rescuing a failing project seems to be something regular nowadays. Whether your project starts tilting is something you should detect beforehand. This episode gives you the major indications for a failing project. Take them seriously and hold your personal vigilant attitude to ensure that you do not miss the point for rescue or escape.
2015-08-0400 minMastering Embedded SystemsThrow away your zero fault targets - MES004In this episode I will show you how zero-fault targets jeopardize the goal they try to achieve. I will show you some of their major problems. And I will give you some ways to escape or at least to handle them.
2015-07-2700 minMastering Embedded SystemsMy biggest (rookie) mistake as Virtual Team Leader - MES003This episode is about my biggest mistake when starting to lead a Virtual Team. It is most likely a very common mistake. But if you're not familiar with it, you might get trapped for sure. I will give you some thoughts and tools you will be able to prevent your failing when working with Virtual Teams.
2015-07-2100 minMastering Embedded SystemsIn a world of bugs - how to become a successful bug-hunter? - MES002This episode is about how to become a successful bug-hunter. Software and hardware bugs are common problems in the IT and the Embedded World. However the approach to track them down or first to find them, is not really teached somewhere. This episode gives you some basic attitudes how to confront yourself with the work of hunting these tricky beasts.
2015-07-1400 minMastering Embedded SystemsWhy you never become a famous engineer - and 5 smart principles bringing you back on track - MES001How to become a famous and successful Embedded Systems engineer is no secret. It is based on some principles which will smooth your way through to real expertism. You need to understand the deep insight of Embedded Systems, their major differences and the way how to handle them cleverly. This episode gives you an introduction into my 5 fundamentals to become an outstanding expert in Embedded Systems. Take them as an blueprint to adapt your own work and improve your success.
2015-07-0700 minMastering Embedded SystemsOut of practice into practice - MES000In this very first episode, I'll give you a short intro on this new podcast. You hear some basics about myself. You understand my motivation and intention to start this podcast. I'll present you the main four problems I have identified during working in Embedded Systems realm. And you will get an outview on the bullet topics, structure and schedule of the outstanding episodes.
2015-06-2500 min