Program Writing and Maintenance

If you need a specific piece of software written to fit in your system, or need a current program maintained or extended, we can provide you with a cost-effective service to help you define the requirements, examine any current software you have and to provide tested, quality software modules which can be maintained in the future, whether or not that is carried out by us or another software engineer.

Application areas of expertise include:

• test and measurement typically in final/functional test
• data acquisition
• hardware control
• environmental monitoring
• data logging

A Surprising Effect on Quality

We regularly augment development groups and individuals writing applications, especially in Agilent VEE Pro, sometimes with a surprising effect on quality.

Outsourcing even part of the development effort enforces some processes that may be avoided as being 'only suitable for much larger projects' or too much like 'red tape'!

As an illustration, to have someone provide a module to perform specific operations on an instrument requires:

• those operations to be specified in detail - parameters of the settings or measurements, the ranges of those parameters and so on
• an interface specification so that other parts of the application can be developed concurrently
• a module test specification so the delivered software can be demonstrated that it performs as designed

These documents do not need to be long-winded, formal or use a particular nomenclature to be useful: engineering notes and sketches are just as effective. However, often they are not easy to write because they require some high-level analysis.

Relax. We can help you by drafting the specifications ( obviously after requesting the pertinent information from you ) for your approval. You will find this clarifies the whole design process.

The 'interface specification' often leads to a simple simulator which not only facilitates testing in the short term but also aids support and maintenance when the instrument ( in this example ) is no longer available to the software developer.

Of course we are also keen to design, create and test the software to meet those specifications, whether written by you or us!

In conclusion, using an experienced external agent can improve your application's quality by honing the design, assuring its testability and enhancing its maintainability & supportability. Why not call or e-mail us to discuss your application?