Case study: HP FutureSmart firmware

- In unit three, I'm going to present a case study, this case study is from Hewlett-Packard's Laserjet team. The team who are building the firmware for Laserjet. The Laserjet firmware team at Hewlett-Packard had a problem, they were moving too slowly, the firmware was on the critical path for all new releases of new devices that they were building. And this had been the case for many years, they tried all the usual techniques, they tried hiring people, firing people, outsourcing, insourcing, and in the end they were so desperate they asked engineering management for help, which is how you know things are really bad. What engineering management did, which was interesting in its own right, was look at the activities that the development team was working on, and what they were spending their money on, in terms of activities. Normally when we do accounting we do cost accounting, which is counting the things and how much money we're spending on the things. Instead they looked at the…