Hardware development, like many engineering projects, is typically a group effort, with contributors increasingly working from home or across multiple buildings, organizations, states, countries, and continents rather than face-to-face. And as a new wave of hardware start-ups are finding out, coordinating those contributors often requires more sophisticated tools than just e-mail and phone calls.
“Hardware development follows specific rules and sequences to produce high-quality, stable products in the quantity you need,” agrees Lucas Wang, CEO of HWTrek, another company founded to develop software for hardware collaborators. “There are several steps you can’t skip or detour before shipping a product.” International collaboration using mainstream tools can cause particular challenges, says Wang, giving the example that “Google Docs doesn’t function well in China, and there’s a version-control issue.”
This article by was published on IEEE Spectrum, read more here.
