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Embedded Computing
Complex technical sales and manufacturing engagements across the global electronics supply chain.
Intel
Arm
NXP Semiconductors
Texas Instruments
Inside this journey
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Pre-Discovery
Align cross-functional decision makers, timelines, and risks before deeper technical evaluation.
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Stakeholder Alignment
Confirm decision roles, timelines, supply and certification constraints, and what ‘good’ looks like for each stakeholder.
Alignment Questions
Quick Introductions — Who’s In The Room (Pre-Discovery)
- Who from your team will be actively involved in the processor selection and sign-off?
- Who is the single person we should treat as the primary point-of-contact for coordination (name and role)?
- Which role holds the final technical veto for the architecture decision?
- What is your informal project or program name (so our teams reference the same thing)?
- Which external organizations (Tier-1 suppliers, contract manufacturers, key customers) must be looped into this decision?
Why Now? The Tipping Point
- What event or constraint made this architecture decision urgent right now — and why can’t it wait?
- Which of these best describes the primary trigger for evaluating a new processor?
- When did you first notice the trigger that prompted this evaluation?
- If you miss your target launch date due to processor selection delays, what are the business consequences?
- Describe the single worst-case outcome if we don’t resolve this decision within your timeline.
Who's Worried and Why — Emotional Stakes Mapped
- Who on your team will lose the most sleep if this processor choice proves to be the wrong one, and what keeps them awake?
- For the principal engineer/hardware architect, what are the non-negotiable technical success signals?
- For procurement or sourcing, which of the following would they view as the top priority?
- For certification/regulatory stakeholders, which certifications are absolute must-haves for this product?
- List two concrete metrics each key stakeholder will use to say “we chose correctly” (e.g., X J/s, Y ms latency, Z months to production).
- Who on your team has final budgetary authority for locking the architecture?
Constraints That Break Deals — The Silent Killers
- What single hidden constraint would cause you to abandon a processor choice late in the program?
- Which supply-related risks are most concerning for your program right now?
- Which certification timelines create immovable deadlines for your schedule?
- Are there procurement policies or contract terms (e.g., mandated suppliers, no single source, minimum lead time guarantees) that would block a vendor selection? If yes, describe.
- How much calendar runway do you need to mitigate a supply or certification blocker (time to resolution before program impact)?
Reality Check — Where Your Prototype & Software Really Are
- How would you best describe the current hardware state of your product?
- What is the status of firmware porting to alternative architectures?
- Which RTOS and middleware stacks are required or preferred for your product?
- What are the top three technical risks in your current prototype that could prevent a smooth migration (be specific with modules or features)?
- Do you already have baseline performance-per-watt or latency numbers for the incumbent? If yes, please share the key figures or test method.
Decision Timeline — Gates, Deadlines and Who Signs
- Is your decision timeline driven by engineering validation milestones or by an immovable business deadline?
- What is your target date for final architecture selection?
- Which internal approval gates must be cleared before procurement can place orders?
- What budget or capex thresholds could delay approval (identify owners who control that sign-off)?
- If we hit a technical blocker during evaluation, how long will your program tolerate a delay before re-evaluating options?
Show Me the Data — Acceptance Criteria That End Debates
- What single metric would immediately convince engineering and stop further debate?
- Which measurable acceptance criteria will you require for evaluation hardware? (select all that apply)
- What real workload(s) must we run on evaluation kits to validate your requirements (describe inputs, dataset sizes, frame rates, etc.)?
- Which measurement tools or test methods will you accept as authoritative for performance and power?
- Who in your organization will sign the evaluation acceptance document when criteria are met?
Trade-offs You're Willing to Live With
- What compromise would you accept to secure on-time delivery (and what would you refuse under any circumstances)?
- How tolerant are you of higher power consumption at launch in exchange for faster time-to-market?
- Would you accept limited middleware or peripheral support initially if it meant meeting the schedule?
- Would you accept a single-source silicon supply for launch if it came with firm long-term commitments?
- If you accept compromises, what specific mitigations must be in place (e.g., roadmap commitments, fallbacks, escrowed IP)?
Communication Rhythm — How We'll Stay Synchronized
- If we stopped hearing from each other for two weeks, what assumption would your team make about progress?
- What meeting cadence works best for your team during evaluation and decision phases?
- What update format helps you best (choose all that apply)?
- Who should Host escalate to inside your organization when a critical blocker appears (name/role)?
- Which collaboration tools should we use for artifacts, issues, and tickets?
Commitment & Next Steps — What Would Make You Comfortable?
- What specific commitment from a supplier would change your evaluation outcome from 'possible' to 'comfortable'?
- Would a binding 10-year supply continuity guarantee be a decisive factor for your selection?
- Would dedicated FAE support and reserved evaluation hardware reduce your risk enough to proceed to formal testing?
- What commercial or licensing terms would we need to present to move to procurement review (e.g., pricing bands, minimum commitments, escrow)?
- What is the single next action you want us to take in the next 72 hours to keep progress moving?
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Current State Mapping
Document the incumbent architecture, qualification status, firmware porting effort, and supply-risk profile.
Current State
Quick Snapshot: Where Things Stand Right Now
- To get started quickly, what is the primary product or line you’re evaluating today (project name or SKU)?
- Which processor family or incumbent architecture is currently in your reference design?
- How mature is the current hardware baseline for this project?
- Who on your team is the technical owner for the architecture evaluation (name/role)?
- Briefly, what’s the single biggest constraint driving your architecture decision right now (power, performance, cost, supply, certification, time-to-market)?
Are We Blind to a Supply or Qualification Time Bomb?
- How confident are you that the incumbent architecture vendor will maintain production support for the next 5–10 years?
- What signals, if any, have you seen from the incumbent vendor about roadmap stability, EOL notices, or licensing changes?
- Have you experienced a supplier-driven redesign or forced migration in the past 5 years? Tell us what happened and the impact.
- Which of the following supply-risk factors apply to your current choice?
- If supply were interrupted for 12 months, what would be the business impact (production delay, lost revenue, contract penalties, reputational)?
How Much Work Will Your Firmware Team Really Have to Do?
- If we switched to a new core tomorrow, how true is this: “Most firmware will port with minor changes”?
- Which software layers are currently in-house vs. third-party (RTOS, BSPs, drivers, middleware, safety stacks)?
- For each of these layers, what’s the estimated effort to port to a new ISA or SoC? (RTOS, bootloader, drivers, middleware, application)
- Which codebase languages and toolchains are core to your firmware (select all that apply)?
- What internal blockers tend to slow porting (skill gaps, test infra, legacy undocumented code, certification constraints)?
- If you had a target timeline for firmware porting, what would that timeline be and what dates are immovable?
Who Really Signs Off When Things Go Wrong?
- Who are the decision-makers and approvers that must sign off on a platform change (roles, not just names)?
- Which stakeholder typically exerts the most influence: hardware architect, software lead, procurement, compliance/safety, or product management?
- How do these stakeholders perceive risk—are they risk-averse, deadline-driven, cost-focused, or quality-first?
- Have any past architecture changes stalled because a stakeholder withdrew support? Describe the situation and consequences.
- Who on your side would be directly responsible for validating vendor-supplied evaluation boards and running benchmark workloads?
Are Your Performance and Power Numbers Hiding an Ugly Surprise?
- Do the incumbent architecture’s published performance-per-watt figures reflect what you see in your workloads?
- Which benchmarks or workloads are mission-critical for your product (edge AI inferencing, real-time control, multimedia, sensor fusion, low-power sensing)?
- How do you currently measure power and performance—lab instrumentation, board-level estimates, or vendor datasheets?
- Share an example: what is the performance target and power budget for a representative SKU?
- What variability have you observed across silicon steppings or vendor revisions that affected your performance or power budgets?
Certification Reality Check: How Much Is Your Compliance Team Worried?
- If we introduced a new core, how confident is your team that certification (functional safety, EMI, medical, automotive) can be maintained without major rework?
- Which certifications are mandatory for your product line (select all that apply)?
- Where have you historically struggled during certification—firmware determinism, interrupt behavior, timing, or hardware variance?
- How tightly coupled is your certification dossier to the current silicon vendor or microarchitecture?
- What would be the minimum evidence or deliverables you’d need from a new architecture vendor to feel comfortable proceeding with certification?
What’s the True Cost and Timeline for Migration?
- If you committed to a migration, how quickly would you need a validated evaluation board and a working BSP to begin integration?
- Estimate the internal FTE effort required for migration (porting, testing, validation) for your flagship SKU.
- What are the non-recurring costs you worry about (toolchain licenses, certification re-tests, custom silicon NRE, training)?
- Which migration model would you prefer: vendor-led turnkey porting, shared engineering, or internal-led with vendor support?
- What would be a successful minimum-viable migration milestone that convinces stakeholders to continue (e.g., performance parity + RTOS boot + safety test)?
So What’s the One Thing We Could Prove Fast to De-Risk This?
- If we could deliver one concrete outcome in the next 4–6 weeks, which of these would move the needle most for you?
- Who needs to be involved on your side to validate that outcome (roles and availability)?
- What success criteria will you use to judge that early outcome (quantitative targets, pass/fail tests, stakeholder signoff)?
- What would make you decide to stop the evaluation early—what are your red lines?
- Are there any constraints (NDAs, export controls, data sensitivity) we must respect during evaluation that would affect what we can test or share?
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Outcome Discovery
Define measurable success signals (performance/W, power budget, certification targets, and 10-year supply needs).
Discovery Questions
Quick Hello — What Brought You Here Today?
- What single outcome would make this engagement feel like time well spent for your team?
- Which product or product line is this decision focused on?
- Rough timeline — when does the architecture decision need to be locked?
- Who on your team will be the day-to-day owner of the evaluation and decision process?
Are You Tolerating a Problem That Will Cost You Later?
- Where do you feel your current processor platform is actively limiting your product goals?
- Can you describe a recent moment when the incumbent platform forced a compromise—what happened and what was the impact?
- How often do those compromises show up during product development or in the field?
- If we left things as-is, what would you expect to be the biggest cost (time, money, quality) over the next 5 years?
If Metrics Were Honest, What Would They Demand?
- Which measurable signals will decide success for you? (pick all that matter)
- For the top one or two metrics you chose, what numeric targets do you need to hit? Please provide units (e.g., 2.5 TOPS/W, <50 mW idle).
- How will you measure those metrics during evaluation—real-world workload, synthetic benchmarks, or both?
- What level of variance from the target is acceptable (e.g., ±5%, ±10%) before you consider the result a failure?
- Who on your team will validate and sign off on these measured results?
How Tight Is the Power Leash Your Product Wears?
- Would you say the product is power-constrained by battery, thermal design, regulatory limits, or other factors?
- What is your typical operating power envelope (idle and peak)? Please specify units.
- Do you prioritize average power, peak power, or worst-case peak for your acceptance criteria?
- Are there modes (sleep, standby, active burst) with different caps we should model? List modes and their budgets.
- What’s the consequence if the power budget is exceeded in production?
What Certification Peak Must We Summit?
- Are you assuming the current architecture will meet all needed certifications, or must a new architecture clear additional gates?
- Which certification standards are required for this product? (select all that apply)
- For each required certification, what are the target classification levels (e.g., ASIL-B, Class II)? Please list.
- How long do you budget for qualification and certification work after prototype availability?
- Who will own certification coordination and sign-off internally?
Who Will Cheer—or Complain—When This Decision Lands?
- If the evaluation shows parity, who benefits most internally—who loses if it fails?
- Who are the formal decision-makers for processor selection, and who are influential stakeholders we should keep informed?
- What does success look like for each stakeholder (e.g., lower BOM, easier certification, lower power)? Please tie names/roles to outcomes where possible.
- How firm is the timeline those stakeholders are driving—are dates flexible or immovable?
- Who will hold the budget for evaluation kits, FAEs, and any NRE required for porting?
Could a Supply Gap Sink the Program?
- How important is a formal 10-year supply commitment to your selection—must-have or nice-to-have?
- What minimum lifetime and continuity assurances do you require (e.g., guaranteed production parts for 5/7/10 years)?
- How do you currently manage supply risk—dual-sourcing, long-term contracts, buffer inventory, or other strategies?
- If a vendor requested a mid-life change (package, node, or EOL), what level of contractual protection would you require to accept that risk?
- What volume forecasts do you expect to share with a silicon partner during contracting (annual units for first 5 years)?
What Would a Fair Evaluation Lab Session Look Like?
- Which of these deliverables do you require from an evaluation kit? (pick all that apply)
- Which workloads should we run to validate your targets—full application, subset, or benchmarks? Please specify examples.
- How long do you need to run each evaluation workload to feel confident in steady-state power and thermal behavior?
- Who will own running the tests—your engineers, our FAEs, or a joint team?
- What format do you want results delivered in—raw logs, summarized dashboards, or formal report?
How Heavy Is the Migration Work Really?
- Which software elements must be ported or revalidated for the new architecture? (select all that apply)
- How large is your existing codebase to migrate (approximate LOC or MB of firmware)?
- Do you depend on third-party IP, libraries, or closed-source components that could block migration?
- Estimate the internal FTE and elapsed time you expect for porting and validation.
- Would you want our FAEs embedded for a period of co-development? If so, how many FAE-weeks would be ideal?
What Commercial Tradeoffs Are You Willing to Make?
- Which commercial model do you prefer for cores and silicon: per-unit licensing, royalty, one-time license, or purchase of components?
- Do you have target production pricing or BOM constraints we should be aware of?
- Would you consider minimum order commitments or co-investment in exchange for better pricing or supply guarantees?
- What commercial risks keep your procurement team awake at night (e.g., price volatility, exclusivity, IP exposure)?
- How important is contractual binding on supply and pricing versus a good-faith commercial letter?
How Will You Define Acceptance—Who Signs the Paper?
- What are the minimum acceptance criteria the product must meet to approve migration (list specific metric pass/fail thresholds)?
- Which tests must pass for formal sign-off (performance, power, thermal, functional, safety)?
- Do you require an independent lab or a customer-run validation for final acceptance?
- Who in your organization will provide the final signature for the platform decision?
- If acceptance criteria are missed, what remediation options would you accept (tuning, SW patches, redesign, contract exit)?
What Could Knock This Off-Course Before Launch?
- Which of these risk areas do you view as most probable to occur during evaluation or pre-production?
- Have you experienced any near-misses or surprises on past architecture changes that we should learn from?
- What contingency plans would you want to see in place before proceeding (alternate suppliers, design freeze windows, test plans)?
- How much schedule slack do you have to absorb a 4–12 week delay in qualification?
- On a scale from 1–5, how risk-averse is your executive team about adopting a newer architecture?
What Support Would Make You Feel Confident to Proceed?
- Which support offerings would materially reduce your migration risk? (select all that apply)
- What level of toolchain access do you require during evaluation (full toolchain, restricted, source-level debuggers)?
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Solution Experience
Run the customer’s workload on evaluation hardware to validate performance-per-watt, real-time behavior, and ecosystem fit.
Experience Meetings
- Pre-Experience Alignment (Current State, Consequence, Future State)
- Evaluation Hardware Setup & Baseline Calibration
- Workload Execution & Performance-per-Watt Measurement
- Ecosystem Compatibility & Porting Risk Review
- Results Validation & Decision Review
- Agree the ecosystem-related acceptance criteria to be checked in final validation.
- Schedule a contingency slot for hardware retests in case of instability.
- Context Recap & Validation Reminder
- Collect validated perf/W numbers and RT traces for the customer workload under the agreed test method.
- Produce a short statistical summary comparing evaluation results to incumbent baseline.
- Confirm in-session whether measurements meet the predefined acceptance criteria or identify concrete shortfalls.
- Capture immediate customer validation or objections to feed remediation planning.
- Lab engineer to upload all raw measurement files, trace captures, and a summary metrics CSV to the shared results folder.
- Seller to annotate traces with event timestamps and initial correlation notes.
- Customer to review results within 48 hours and mark pass/fail against each acceptance criterion.
- If any criterion fails, schedule a targeted remediation session and list suspected root causes.
- Inventory of Ecosystem Components
- Confirm which RTOS/middleware components are production-ready and which require work.
- Produce a prioritized porting task list with rough effort estimates and required FAE allocation.
- Obtain seller commitment to specific remediation actions and timelines if gaps exist.
- Introductions & Meeting Objectives
- Customer to deliver a short list of third-party libraries and their licenses for compatibility review.
- Seller to produce a porting task list with estimated FAE hours and priority rankings.
- Assign an FAE owner and schedule hands-on porting sessions if required.
- Draft an interoperability test checklist reflecting middleware and driver acceptance criteria.
- Executive Summary of Findings
- Customer provides explicit decision (accept, accept-with-remediation, or pause) based on measured evidence.
- If accepted, mutual agreement on immediate deliverables, scope, and timelines for the Solution Scope stage.
- If remediation required, a concrete remediation plan with owners, deliverables, and dates is agreed.
- All technical outputs and logs are committed to a shared repository with an owner for traceability.
- Seller to produce a consolidated evaluation report (metrics, traces, interpretation, pass/fail) within 3 business days.
- Customer to sign and return decision confirmation and any requested clarifications within 5 business days.
- If remediation selected, create a joint project plan with milestones, resource allocations, and SLA commitments.
- Circulate final runbook, raw data links, and FAE contact list to stakeholders.
- A single agreed one-sentence current state that all attendees can repeat back.
- Quantified consequences with at least one numeric metric tied to business or project risk.
- Clear, measurable acceptance criteria that define success for the evaluation.
- An agreed evaluation scope, asset list, and timeline enabling the lab run without delays.
- Customer to provide a one-paragraph current-state summary and workload binaries/datasets within 48 hours.
- Seller to deliver evaluation board serial numbers, test scripts, and power measurement method document before hardware shipment.
- Assign owners for lab setup, instrument calibration, and data collection; schedule setup window.
- Finalize acceptance criteria document and sign-off by both technical leads.
- Inventory & Configuration Verification
- All hardware and instruments validated and documented in the inventory.
- Baseline incumbent measurements collected and uploaded with repeatability verified.
- Runbook and data schema finalized so every run produces consistent, comparable outputs.
- Clear escalation and support path if hardware or measurements fail during evaluation.
- Technician to upload baseline raw logs and summary CSV to shared folder immediately after runs.
- FAE to validate and document instrument calibration certificates and sampling settings.
- Owner to finalize and circulate the runbook including exact CLI commands and trace points.
- Crystal Clear Current State (Precondition 1)
- Demonstrate Critical Paths in Toolchain & Debugger
- Pre-run Checklist & Instrument Readiness
- Power & Thermal Instrumentation Calibration
- Mapping Results to Consequence
- Baseline Run: Incumbent Platform
- Guided Workload Run #1 (Representative Scenario)
- Middleware & Driver Compatibility Check
- Decision Options & Trade-offs
- Explicit Consequence (Precondition 2)
- Porting Risk Assessment & Mitigation
- Real-time Behavior & Trace Capture
- Agree Next Deliverables & Timeline
- Defined Future State & Acceptance Criteria (Precondition 3)
- Environment Stabilization & Repeatability Plan
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Solution Scope
Define evaluation scope, required deliverables (boards, toolchain, FAE time), migration tasks, and acceptance criteria.
Scope Configuration
- Ship evaluation development kit with preinstalled firmware
- Provide board support package (BSP) and device drivers
- Deliver prebuilt cross-toolchain and debugger integrations
- Provide RTOS BSP with safety-certification artifacts
- Deliver reference application implementing target workload
- Supply power-measurement harness with automation scripts
- Deliver legacy-API shim and migration library
- Execute board bring-up and produce bring-up scripts
- Provide 10-year production supply commitment letter
- Deliver manufacturing test vectors and production flash images
- Provide secure-boot and device provisioning reference implementation
- Deliver OTA firmware update reference stack and tools
Scope Questions
Ship evaluation development kit with preinstalled firmware
- Do you require evaluation development kits shipped to your team?
- How many kits do you need initially and over the next 6 months?
- Which regions/countries should the kits be shipped to (list countries or regions)?
- What firmware should be preinstalled (firmware version, features, configurations)?
- Do kits need partner-specific labeling, custom packaging, or NDAs for recipients?
- Do you require burn-in, acceptance testing, or known-good device certification before shipment?
- Are there export control, customs, or regulatory constraints we should account for?
- What is your desired delivery timeline for first kit and ongoing replenishments?
Provide board support package (BSP) and device drivers
- Which OS/RTOS or bare-metal environment must the BSP support?
- Which device drivers are required (select all that apply)?
- Do you need BSP source code, binary artifacts, or both?
- Are there licensing constraints for BSP/drivers we must follow?
- Are any drivers required to meet real-time or safety timing constraints? If yes, specify which and the constraints.
- Do you require vendor maintenance SLAs for BSP/drivers (patch cadence, security fixes)?
- What integration support level do you expect (documentation only, remote FAE support, onsite support)?
- Please list any third-party IPs or middleware the BSP must integrate with (names/versions).
Deliver prebuilt cross-toolchain and debugger integrations
- Which host development environments must be supported?
- Which compilers/toolchains do you require prebuilt (select all that apply)?
- Which debugger/IDE integrations are needed?
- Do you require CI/CD-ready toolchain artifacts (containers, build scripts, package manager distribution)?
- Do prebuilt toolchains need to be signed or checksum-verified for supply integrity?
- Will your team need license support for commercial toolchains (IAR/Keil/Arm)?
- Please describe any special cross-compilation targets or ABI/runtime requirements.
- How many engineers will use the toolchain concurrently (to size licensing and distribution)?
Provide RTOS BSP with safety-certification artifacts
- Which safety standard(s) must artifacts support?
- What target safety integrity level(s) do you need evidence for (e.g., ASIL A-D)?
- Which RTOS should be included in the BSP with certification artifacts?
- Which artifacts are required (design docs, requirements traceability, unit test evidence, FMEA, source code reviews)?
- Do you require the BSP and artifacts to be produced under a controlled configuration management process (documented CM plan)?
- Who will own certification filings — vendor, customer, or joint? Please specify.
- What timeline and milestones do you expect for delivery of certified artifacts?
- Are there tooling or audit requirements (e.g., DOORS, Polarion) for traceability artifacts?
Deliver reference application implementing target workload
- Describe the target workload the reference app must implement (compute, I/O, ML inference, control loop).
- What measurable success metrics must the reference app demonstrate (e.g., FPS, latency, perf/W, memory footprint)?
- Which peripherals and sensors must the reference app integrate with?
- Do you require the reference application as source code, binary, or containerized image?
- Should the reference app include performance/per-power measurement harness and sample datasets?
- Are there real-time constraints or deadlines the reference app must meet? If yes, specify.
- Will the reference app be used as the baseline for acceptance criteria in evaluation?
- Any licensing or IP restrictions on demo code we should be aware of?
Supply power-measurement harness with automation scripts
- What power measurement accuracy and sample rate do you require?
- Which channels and rails must the harness measure (CPU core, SoC, I/O, peripherals)?
- Which measurement connectors/interfaces do your boards use (shunt resistor, sense header, pogo pins)?
- Do you require automated scripts for data capture and reporting? If yes, what format (CSV, JSON, database)?
- Do you need integration with specific lab equipment (Keysight, National Instruments, Data Acquisition systems)?
- Will measurements be taken in thermal chamber or under varying environmental conditions?
- How many boards will be instrumented concurrently for measurement?
- Do you need scripts delivered as source (Python/Node) or prebuilt executables?
Deliver legacy-API shim and migration library
- Which legacy API(s) or ABI(s) must be supported by the shim (names and versions)?
- Do you require source-compatible shims (drop-in headers) or binary translation layers?
- Which programming languages and build systems must the migration library support?
- Are there performance overhead constraints for the shim (max % latency or memory increase)?
- Do you require migration tests, CI integration, or sample porting guides alongside the library?
- Is the legacy API part of a certified/safety-critical flow that requires traceability?
- How many distinct legacy subsystems or modules must be supported initially?
Execute board bring-up and produce bring-up scripts
- Will vendor FAE perform bring-up onsite, remotely, or provide scripts for your team to run?
- Which hardware bring-up items must be executed (DDR init, eMMC, power sequencing, PHY calibration)?
- Do you require automated bring-up scripts (shell/Python) and reproducible logs?
- Do we need access to schematics, BOM, or board-level debug interfaces (JTAG/SWD) to complete bring-up?
- What is your expected timeline to have a board functional for evaluation?
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Mutual Commit
Agree commercial terms, production pricing, licensing commitments, and a binding supply continuity guarantee for the product lifecycle.
Agreement Modules
- Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA)
- Master Commercial Agreement (MCA)
- Statement of Work (SOW)
- Production Supply & Continuity Guarantee
- Volume Pricing & Forecast Agreement
- Software Licensing & IP Rights
- Acceptance & Qualification Criteria Annex
- Warranty, Liability & Indemnification
- Change Control & End-of-Life (EOL) Policy
- Support & Field Application Engineer (FAE) Commitment
- Source Code & Toolchain Escrow
- Payment Terms & Invoicing Schedule
- Regulatory, Compliance & Export Controls
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Deployment
Operationalize rollout with readiness checks, enablement, and outcome validation.
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Pre-Deployment Readiness
Confirm test environments, access to evaluation kits, owners, and risk controls needed for qualification and porting.
Readiness Questions
Getting Started — A Quick Pulse Check
- What is the project name and a one-sentence summary of the deployment target (product, industry, and launch window)?
- Who will be the single point of contact for silicon bring-up, firmware porting, and qualification on your side? (name, role, preferred contact method)
- Which role group will be the primary decision-maker for qualification sign-off on this project?
- How confident are you that your team can provide evaluation hardware and lab access within the next 4–8 weeks?
If This Were to Fail, What Would You Blame First?
- If qualification or porting misses the schedule, what single factor would you point to as the root cause?
- Which parts of your technical stack do you consider most fragile for a silicon migration?
- Have you attempted a similar architecture migration in the past 3 years? If yes, how far did you get and what stalled progress?
- If a delay occurs, how long would it typically push your product timeline (select the best estimate)?
Tell Me About Your Test Lab — Is It Battle-Ready?
- Imagine the evaluation board sits in your lab today—what is the first thing that will break in your test flow?
- Which test capabilities do you currently have available for validation?
- Do you have reserved lab time or dedicated racks for silicon bring-up and benchmark runs, or are resources shared ad-hoc?
- Who controls physical and remote access to your lab, and what onboarding steps do guest vendors typically need?
- Which remote-access and security constraints would affect our engineers when using your kits?
What Would Keep You Awake at Night During Porting?
- Which certification or compliance step keeps you up at night when changing core silicon?
- What is the current certification status of your product baseline and which certifications will be required for this release?
- Approximately what percentage of your firmware is tightly coupled to the incumbent CPU/arch (low-level drivers, bootloader, hardware abstraction)?
- Do you have a formal risk acceptance and change-control process for silicon/platform changes? If yes, who signs off and how long does approval take?
Where Will the Evaluation Kits Need to Be — And Who Gets Them First?
- If we can only ship a limited number of kits initially, which location or team should receive them to create the most momentum?
- How many evaluation kits would you need to run parallel validation across teams (select the best estimate)?
- Who should be the primary contact for logistics, customs clearance, and receiving of hardware kits?
- Are there export control, customs, or IP constraints that limit where or to whom we can ship evaluation hardware?
How Do You Measure Success Before You Cut Over?
- If you had to name one metric that would convince leadership to adopt the silicon, what would it be (performance, power, certification readiness, migration effort, etc.)?
- Please capture the concrete targets we must hit (e.g., perf/W, max power at peak load, latency budget, and any 10-year supply requirements).
- Which benchmark suites or acceptance tests are mandatory for production sign-off?
- Who has final sign-off authority for production readiness and what are their top three concerns when approving silicon changes?
- What failure rate or flakiness threshold during validation would be considered unacceptable for proceeding to production sign-off?
If We Hit a Roadblock, How Do We Escalate?
- When a hard blocker appears during porting, what escalation path actually gets things fixed quickly in your organization?
- During critical phases, which cadence works best for updates and problem-solving (daily stand-up, weekly sync, war room, or ad-hoc)?
- Who are the escalation contacts on your side (role, backup, and preferred contact method)?
- What SLAs do you expect for vendor issue response and target timelines for root-cause and remediation?
- Are there contractual remedies you require for unacceptable delays (supply guarantees, price protections, penalties)? If so, describe what matters most.
What Would a Smooth Handoff Feel Like?
- Describe the handoff from evaluation to in-house production that would make you say 'that was seamless'—what specific deliverables and behaviors made it feel easy?
- Which deliverables must we provide before you begin large-scale migration?
- Estimate the FAE support you expect over the next 6 months (choose best estimate).
- What enablement formats help your engineers ramp fastest (hands-on workshop, remote sessions, written guides, pairing with our FAE)?
- How would you prefer ongoing supply and roadmap communication to be handled post-adoption?
Anything You're Not Saying — But We Should Know?
- What internal political or commercial pressure could sink a migration effort even if the technical work succeeds?
- Are there stakeholders outside engineering (procurement, legal, brand/OEM leadership) who must be convinced? If yes, who and what are their main concerns?
- How would you describe your team's appetite for platform change and risk right now?
- Which non-technical outcomes are most at risk during a silicon migration (time-to-market, cost, customer perception, support burden)?
- Have prior vendor interactions left you skeptical of promises around supply, support, or timelines? If so, what happened?
Next Small Steps — What Can We Do Together This Week?
- If we take one thing off your plate this week to de-risk the deployment, what should it be?
- Which pilot lab, team, or workload should we prioritize for the first kit shipment to create early wins?
- What's the earliest date you can accept evaluation hardware, and who must approve the shipment on your side?
- Do we have the legal paperwork in place (NDAs, MSA, IP or export agreements) to support remote access or on-site support?
- What would be a realistic 30-day success checkpoint you and we can agree on?
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Deployment Enablement
Coordinate schedules, FAE support, toolchain enablement, and tasks for silicon bring-up, firmware porting, and certification.
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Validation Checklist
Execute and document benchmark runs, power measurements, RTOS/middleware qualification, and acceptance tests for production signoff.
Validation Questions
Quick Snapshot: Where are you in the Validation Journey?
- Which statement best describes your current status for validation of the targeted product?
- Do you already have evaluation hardware and firmware in-hand to run production-like workloads?
- Who is the primary engineering owner driving validation (name/role/team)?
- What is the target milestone or date you are aiming to reach production signoff?
- Summarize the most recent benchmark or power measurement you ran and the single biggest surprise from that run.
What Are You Quietly Hoping Will Just Work?
- Which assumption about validation are you relying on that would be most damaging if it turns out to be false?
- How confident are you that current firmware/images reproduce across multiple boards without manual tuning?
- When a benchmark deviates from expectations, what’s the typical root cause—software, thermal, measurement method, silicon revision, or something else?
- How long have you been tolerating that assumption (days/weeks/months)?
- If that assumption fails close to design freeze, what is the consequence for your timeline or product decision?
If You Could Boil Signoff Down To One Thing, What Would It Be?
- If an executive asked for a single metric to greenlight production, which would you choose (and why)?
- Which of these metrics are absolute pass/fail for you?
- What are the numeric thresholds you require for those pass/fail metrics (please include units)?
- Are there secondary metrics that would force mitigation work even if core metrics pass (e.g., intermittent interrupts, long-tail memory faults)?
- How does your acceptance criteria differ between evaluation hardware and final silicon?
Who Signs the Data — and Who Signs the Check?
- Who are the named approvers required to accept validation results before production signoff?
- Which stakeholder is the final arbiter if validation results are contested?
- What types of artifacts must accompany every validation run for auditability (select all that apply)?
- How formal must the acceptance artifacts be (informal notes, lab report, ISO-style test report)?
- If a supply disruption occurs, who is responsible for triggering the mitigation plan and communicating to partners?
Could a New Engineer Reproduce These Numbers Tomorrow?
- If we handed your test package and one eval board to a contractor, how quickly would they reproduce baseline numbers (hours/days/weeks)?
- Do you have automated test runs / CI pipelines that execute the benchmark and capture power traces?
- Which tools and instruments are required to reproduce runs (select all that apply)?
- Do you maintain runbooks that capture environment setup, measurement settings, and calibration steps?
- What are the three most common blockers a new engineer encounters when trying to reproduce a failing run?
Hidden Risks: Software, Supply, and Certification Landmines
- Which single software or supply dependency would cause the largest qualification delay if it became unavailable tomorrow?
- What is the maturity level of your RTOS and middleware on this architecture?
- Do you have certification targets (e.g., ISO 26262, IEC 62304) that require specific test evidence from validation?
- If certification is required, which of these evidence gaps are most urgent?
- Have you mapped mitigation paths if a middleware vendor cannot meet your timeline (e.g., self-port, alternative vendor)?
Two Things We Do Today That Change the Outcome — Which Two Are They?
- If you could prioritize only two validation tasks before the next design freeze, which would they be?
- For each prioritized task, what resource is the bottleneck—FAE time, lab time, instrumentation, firmware, or approval?
- How much FAE support do you expect from the vendor to complete those tasks (hours/weeks)?
- What would success look like for each chosen task and how will we measure it?
- If we offered a vendor-run day in your lab to unblock one task, which task would you pick and why?
Closing the Loop: How Do We Keep Validation From Becoming Meeting Notes?
- What channel and cadence do you prefer for sharing validation artifacts, exceptions, and action items (select up to two)?
- Who will own the live validation dashboard and who will be the escalation contact for out-of-spec results?
- How often should we run a joint review of validation progress and blockers?
- What format do you trust most for lessons-learned so they drive design changes (post-mortem, checklist updates, formal change request)?
- What single thing would make you feel genuinely confident we’ll hit production signoff on schedule?
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Success
Confirm outcomes, capture lessons learned, and maintain a shared channel for issues, supply alerts, and roadmap requests.
Success Reviews
- Outcome Confirmation Review
- Lessons Learned Retrospective
- Supply Continuity & Alerts Channel Setup
- Product Roadmap & Customer Feature Request Alignment
- Ongoing Support, Monitoring & QBR Cadence
Issues & Enhancements
- Assign a product liaison responsible for customer communications and tracking request progress.
- Define alert taxonomy, severity thresholds, and required SLA responses.
- Establish and document an escalation RACI and verify the acknowledgement workflow.
- Provision the shared channel, invite the agreed contact list, and document access rules.
- Publish the supply alert template, severity thresholds, and required evidence for each alert.
- Document and distribute the escalation RACI with primary and secondary contacts.
- Schedule a quarterly supply health cadence and add to both parties' calendars.
- Recap Customer Business Drivers & Requests
- Agree on a prioritized list of customer requests and where they map on the vendor roadmap.
- Set realistic timelines and communicate constraints that affect delivery.
- Establish a single channel and SLA for future roadmap requests and status updates.
- Publish the prioritized customer request register with status (committed/backlog/rejected) and rationale.
- Opening & Objectives
- Document the prioritization criteria and SLAs for roadmap responses.
- Add committed items to the next planning cycle and schedule check-ins for multi-quarter items.
- Support Model & SLA Review
- Establish and document the ongoing support model and SLA expectations.
- Agree on production KPIs and grant access to monitoring dashboards.
- Set the QBR cadence and standard agenda for long-term governance and roadmap alignment.
- Provision monitoring dashboards, define KPI queries, and grant access to customer and vendor stakeholders.
- Create an incident runbook with contact tree, severity definitions, and patch/notification steps.
- Schedule recurring QBR invites and publish the QBR agenda template.
- Define the monthly health report format to be sent ahead of QBRs.
- Validate measured outcomes against the previously agreed success criteria and capture evidence.
- Quantify any gaps and agree business consequences and remediation timelines.
- Obtain formal customer acceptance or a documented conditional-acceptance with next steps.
- Establish a monitoring plan and owner for ongoing production metrics and alerts.
- Compile and publish the verified measurement report with raw data and conclusions to the shared channel.
- Assign remediation owners, deadlines, and acceptance criteria for any unresolved gaps.
- Publish formal acceptance or conditional-acceptance document and capture signatures/acknowledgements.
- Configure monitoring metrics and alert thresholds; grant access to dashboards to agreed stakeholders.
- Purpose, Norms, and Scope
- Create a prioritized list of actionable improvements addressing root causes.
- Assign clear owners, deadlines, and acceptance criteria for each improvement.
- Document institutional knowledge and updates required for onboarding, playbooks, or templates.
- Publish the lessons-learned register (living document) with categorized items and owners.
- Assign owners and target dates for each high-priority improvement and track in the project tracker.
- Update onboarding, runbooks, and test plans to incorporate agreed changes.
- Schedule a follow-up check-in to validate progress on the top 3 improvements in 8–12 weeks.
- Review Supply Commitments & SLAs
- Create an agreed shared channel and access list for supply communications.
- Define Alert Types, Thresholds & Priority Levels
- Monitoring KPIs & Dashboards
- Vendor Roadmap Overview and Constraints
- Timeline & Facts (Data Review)
- One-sentence Current State
- Shared Channel & Access Model
- Measured Outcomes Review
- Incident Response & Patch Management
- What Worked Well
- Prioritization Framework & Tradeoffs
- Decision & Expected Timelines
- What Didn't Work & Impact
- QBR Cadence, Metrics, and Agenda
- Gap Analysis & Consequence Quantification
- Escalation Paths & RACI
- Schedule & Close
- Alert Simulation & Acknowledgement Flow
- Acceptance Decision / Sign-off
- Root Cause Analysis