About Dedicated Systems Experts

Background.

DS-Experts aims to provide highest added-value services to its clients, deploying state-of-the-art knowledge of various types of embedded systems and their characteristics

Our knowledge of component technologies (for hardware, software and systems) is underpinned by methods and analytic/diagnostic techniques - "brainware".

These are applied:

to verify and validate performance
to insure safe and/or secure operation
to identify modifications to ensure adherence to requirements
to design-out undesirable behaviour

whether the requirements find their roots in the marketplace, in legislation, or are part of defined specifications.

DS-Experts positions itself as a provider of expertise and engineering support.
We accept that up to 20% of any mission be performed at the customer's location, with the remainder executed via our VPN facilities.

This confers two benefits, for both DS-Experts and the client.

Firstly, it enforces rigour in requirements definition.
It also assists DS-Experts to plan the intervention of the most appropriate expert personnel to support the various stages of the mission.

Secondly, it allows DS-Experts to quote a "fixed review able price".

Fixed, because the initial rigour applied to requirements definition permits us to determine a fee for assistance based on the best specifications available at project commencement.
Review able, because we, and our clients, accept that not everything can be defined a priori, and that adaptations to requirements may be unavoidable based on the outcome of verification and validation exercises.

A proposal therefore always states the number of days attributed to component tasks.
At the mission review points, if we recommend, and our client agrees that a task should be deleted, the price is deducted.
Conversely, if we agree that new tasks are required, or task durations require modification, then price is adjusted, based on the initially-agreed day-rate parameters.

For missions which include software development support, a prototype is developed and demonstrated at the soonest opportunity. This serves the purpose of providing a discussion platform between the client and DS-Experts, as a basis for review and eventual refinement of requirements.

In all software design support - whether carried out by DS-Experts or by another 3rd-party supplier to the client - DS-Experts insists on application of our corporate coding practice.
In all software design, extensive error handling and monitoring aspects are de facto integrated - that is, even if such features do not form part of the client's original specifications.

From our experience of more than 15 years in providing total solutions for real-time system development projects, DS-Experts views this practice as a prime factor for underpinning software quality assurance.
It serves to facilitate any subsequent debugging exercises, as well as maintenance.