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Friday, 27 August 2010 12:03 |
A friend of mine once recommended me a book. It was The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell. It sounded interesting, so I decided to put it on my reading list. Somehow the existence of my reading list came to the knowledge of a family member, I swear I don't know how. One thing led to another and by weird coincidence, on my next birthday I got this book as a present. I haven't yet found the time to read it from cover to cover, though I think I've read the first chapter a few times. I guess I'll just have to take it with on my next vacation.
So what is a tipping point anyway? In certain communities or markets there's a phenomenon called the Network Effect. The value of a product or service becomes greater in the eyes of its users as more and more people use it. Take Facebook for example - would you sign up if there were only 1000 active members? how about 100 million including everyone you know? The tipping point is the exact point where Facebook had gained just enough members to create a significant amount of positive feedback among its users, so that the number of users began to grow exponentially.
In EDA, network externalities and positive feedback are present too, of course. And with great strength. Chip designers and verifiers, as technology adopters, take more value from widely accepted technologies than from niche ones, be it programming languages, methodologies and standards. They enjoy a larger community of users, better tutorials and training, a market for 3rd party IP, open source extensions, and low switching costs when changing vendors (or jobs!).
But tipping points exist not only in commercial markets, they can also be found in smaller, intimate communities. Much smaller actually. The process of adopting a new verification methodology in small verification teams pretty much follows the same pattern. As the number of "users" grows, the value of the new methodology increases. But wait! how is that similar to commercial markets? Clearly verification managers can pretty much dictate whatever methodology they want to establish. Free will in verification teams? dream on.
While theoretically this should be true, in reality, at least from what I've seen in several projects, there's always "the standard way we do verification here" but if you dig down a bit you'll quickly notice that some (if not most) team members have their own interpretation of that methodology. Reasons vary - some are against "new methodologies", some don't understand it, some try to maintain some level of job security by obfuscating their code, and others don't comply just out of sheer laziness. Problem is, most verifiers are not rewarded for their code quality or reusability. A good verifier is one who finds many bugs, at least in the eyes of the management.
As a verification manager, however, you should insist on adopting the chosen verification methodology. One thing to keep in mind here is that the very existence of a methodology is what makes all the difference, regardless of which methodology it is. Ok, unless you pick a really crappy one... And once enough team members fully comply with it, the magic starts to kick in. It's the tipping point right there. One of the nicest things that's starting to happen now is that team members who once refused to play along would now start to ask questions about the "new" methodology thanks to peer pressure and the understanding that the benefit outweighs their switching cost.
Once methodology is well established, people start to speak the same language. They communicate better, they work faster and synergy is increasing. Brainstorming sessions become a delight when one good idea is beneficial to all. Creating new environments or tests becomes a piece of cake thanks to a standardized way of doing things and a rich library of building blocks that share a common API. Automation and smart scripts can be introduced to remove unnecessary overhead and create a streamlined work environment where engineer A can quickly step into engineer B's code if required. But above all, once your team has passed the tipping point, everyone enjoys a sensation of effectiveness and excellence, which inevitably leads to success.
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