Objective

The customer sought a partner to:

1. 1. Work on Fly-by-Wire (FBW), an electronic interface system replacing traditional manual flight controls.
2. 2. Rapidly expand a large engineering team focused on developing embedded flight control computer software.
3. 3. Increase the number of V&V (Verification and Validation) Engineers to enhance the existing process, a task the client could not manage alone.

Solution Provided

1. 1. EXB was engaged to supply a Team Lead, a Manager, and 8 V&V resources for the initial phase. We expanded this team from 10 to 50 members.
2. 2. Faced with a significant V&V effort delayed by the client, we responded agilely by quickly onboarding additional resources to meet the expanded V&V requirements.
3. 3. We provided the customer with a realistic engineer ramp-up plan and leveraged EXB TPM’s relationship to bypass their interviews, allowing us to select our own teams and speed up the hiring process.

Key Features

1. 1. Full software development lifecycle
2. 2. High-Level Requirements (HLR) and Low-Level Requirements (LLRs) managed using DOORS
3. 3. Development using Simulink/Stateflow
4. 4. System-level testing with Python
5. 5. Software-level testing with C/C++
6. 6. Expertise in Flight Control Systems and Flight Management Systems
7. 7. Compliance with DO-178C
8. 8. Utilization of Agile Scrum methodology

Value Provided

1. 1. Completed the full software development lifecycle for embedded flight control computer software.
2. 2. Expanded the team from 18 to 50 members in six months, then streamlined to 45 members after six more months.
3. 3. Became the best and largest supplier on the program, eventually taking over some roles from competitors.
4. 4. When additional support was needed in the next phase, we rapidly assembled a team of 12 engineers, 80% of whom had prior experience on the project.