Coordinating hardware and software development: Evidence of success factors

This thesis provides evidence on the factors that lead to success in coordination of concurrent hardware and software development in complex electronic system design. The success measures used were related to project cost and schedule adherence, product functionality and total development time.; With the purpose of obtaining a better understanding of how hardware and software coordination takes place in practice and what the managerial concerns around this topic are, two case studies with local telecom firms were carried out. Data from the case studies were used to inform the theoretical model used and data gathering method. Subsequently, data were gathered on 28 projects and put together with other 21 previously gathered by Koch (1997) to form an aggregate sample.; The results from the analysis of the new sample and of the aggregate sample showed that: number of levels to common report, extent of shared design documents, physical distance and group-based evaluations between hardware and software developers, correlated with project cost, schedule and product functionality goals. Decreasing physical distance and the number of levels to common report were found to have significant effect in reducing product development time.