This post is intended to be the first of a series of posts targeted at exploring some of the development challenges I have faced during my time as a test engineer primarily leveraging the NI toolchain to do my work. I hope the series will serve as an informative and insightful look at the discipline of test engineering, it's challenges and how I have muddled through solving some of those challenges (or at least worked within their constraints). My experience as a (fairly) recent grad and new to the discipline is that it can be hard to navigate due to it's relatively tribal nature in most organizations. Combine that with the seemingly small number of formal educational programs in test engineering and you end up with a line of work that seems to mean many different things to many different people and organizations. My own goal for these posts is to attempt to make some sense of it all. I should mention that most of me experience has been spent on the software side of things, although I am no stranger to sticking my head inside a 19" rack to go looking for the source of a short. Please provide feedback and insight (and corrections) in the comments! Part 1: Test Engineering Test engineering? Test engineering is the discipline of engineering hardware and software systems whose goal is to verify and validate the quality of a product throughout it's life cycle. The field is highly inter-disciplinary and test engineering groups are typically working closely with design, quality and manufacturing teams to get the job done. What is a test? On one end of the spectrum stands validation testing, where we attempt to validate that a widget was designed correctly. I.E. Did we build the right thing? On the other end we have verification or production testing where we attempt to verify that the widget was built correctly. I.E. Did we build it right? The "ends" of this spectrum parallel the ends of the product V&V curve. Validation is typically more of a design related activity while verification tends to be more of a production related activity. There can be many various stages of test placed throughout the development cycle that blur the lines of these two classifications. Why do we do it? So that our widgets don't break on our customers, or worse, become self aware and do all sorts of other nasty things. Incorporating and planning for test in the product development life cycle is key for achieving schedule and budget goals in an engineering project (Or more specifically one that spits out a widget. Caveat: software systems are not exempt! They entail different considerations though). As the old saying goes, "test early and often". Incorporating a sound, unified test strategy throughout a development cycle leads to a number of things that make leadership happy AND a number of things that make engineers happy. Let's take a look: Leadership smiles when
*Escapes are when a bad product ends up in the hands of the customer. Engineers smile when
Test keeps everyone smiling by ensuring
Why should I care? You should care because test engineering can be pretty darn tough and as a result some really interesting problem spaces and corresponding solutions pop up quite often. Test engineering is inherently difficult for a number of reasons. In my mind, some of the largest are:
These operational constraints force the need for test engineering groups to leverage some of the following unique types of engineering solutions in order to stay ahead of the curve and deliver on time and on budget:
There is much to talk about concerning both hardware and software platforms used in test engineering. My goal with the next post will be to break down an effective approach to meeting the challenge of these numerous and varied requirements. Owen Search is an Avionics Test Engineer at SpaceX. He is a Certified LabVIEW Architect, Certified TestStand Architect, Certified LabVIEW Embedded Systems Developer, Certified LabWindows/CVI Developer and NI Certified Professional Instructor. C# is his current language of choice but he has a soft spot for C/C++ and a love of LabVIEW. He holds a BS in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Connecticut.
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