Requirements Engineering, part 2: A Practical Process for Safety-Critical Development

The Pragmatic Embedded Podcast · 27 May 2026 · 50m

What this episode covers

Jeff Gable and Luca engineer discuss a rigorous process for requirements engineering in safety-critical development, particularly for medical devices. They distinguish between prototyping (technical feasibility) and MVPs (market viability), emphasizing that design-controlled requirements must be minimal yet comprehensive, including extensive error handling. The hosts advocate for writing test cases alongside requirements, tracking requirements completion for honest project status, and using 'tracer bullets' to reduce uncertainty early in implementation.

Mentioned

Chips
STM32 HAL
Tools
Jira, Linear
Also
FDA, Agile Embedded Slack Channel, Matt Pocock, The Pragmatic Programmer, The Art of Unix Programming, Embedded.fm, Elecia White, Christopher White, Intertek

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