Theatre

Building an Agile Development Team with a Framework you can use Anywhere

Harrison Donahue

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30:39

EOC 2021

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Harrison Donahue

Harrison Donahue is a Business Development Manager at the Qt Company. Coming originally from a background in embedded firmware development on microcontroller-based IoT solutions for a global market, he's now helping developers build world-class UI/UX for these constrained platforms through his role at The Qt Company.

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The Qt Company

The Qt Company develops and delivers the Qt development framework under commercial and open source licenses. We enable a single software code across all operating systems, platforms and screen types, from desktops and embedded systems to wearables and mobile devices. Qt is used by approximately one million developers worldwide and is the leading independent technology behind millions of devices and applications. Qt is the platform of choice for in-vehicle systems, medical devices, industrial automation devices, and other business critical application manufacturers, and is used by leading global players in more than 70 industries.

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Topics Covered

Agile/Processes

Theatre

Building an Agile Development Team with a Framework you can use Anywhere

Harrison Donahue

30:39 EOC 2021

Harrison Donahue

30:39

Your development project needs predictable delivery timelines, cost and scheduling that allows to changing scopes - even during a pandemic. Join Harrison Donahue, Business Development Manager at The Qt Company to hear about how to address problems with efficient development when developers need to "change gears" when working on multiple projects of differing scope, or taking over for someone else. You will also find out about the advantages of leveraging a framework where the tooling and APIs are the same across MCU, MPU, Desktop and Mobile.

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Why does Harrison recommend using a single cross-platform framework like Qt to improve team agility?

A It reduces developer ramp-up and lets team members move between projects because APIs and tooling are consistent.

B It removes the need for QA testing by ensuring perfect behavior across all platforms.

C It forces every project to be rewritten for each new platform, which increases reuse.

D It guarantees vendor lock-in so teams don't waste time choosing new platforms.

E It primarily accelerates hardware design rather than improving software reuse.

What is the primary workflow improvement provided by Qt Design Studio as Harrison describes it?

A It replaces developers by automatically writing full backend application logic from design files.

B It helps bridge design and development by importing design assets and generating QML code with live preview and device emulation.

C It focuses only on creating 3D models and does not support 2D UI workflows.

D It automatically optimizes performance so you never need to profile on the target device.

E It only exports static images and still requires developers to implement the UI entirely by hand.

How does Harrison say QML helps teams minimize setbacks and reduce technical debt?

A QML encourages modular, reusable UI components so it's easier to prototype, remove features, and avoid fragile dependencies.

B QML enforces monolithic UI modules that are hard to change and therefore increases technical debt.

C QML automatically fixes backend bugs so developers don't need to write tests.

D QML is only useful for decorative animations and cannot be used for real UI composition.

E QML requires reimplementing standard backend libraries like networking and threading for each project.

What approach does Harrison recommend for validating business value during development?

A Delay user testing until the full product is complete so feedback is comprehensive.

B Use rapid prototyping, host emulation, live preview and shareable executables to gather early, incremental user feedback.

C Rely solely on designer mockups and internal reviews instead of deploying actual apps to users.

D Validate value only through internal management review and avoid early user exposure.

E Use only web-based mocks that don't reflect target performance because they are fastest to produce.

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Upvotes Newest Oldest

SimonSmith

Score: 0 | 5 years ago | no reply

Great to hear about the capabilities of Qt for MCUs and understand the differences between it and the upstream version.

meenal_b

Score: 1 | 5 years ago | 1 reply

I thought your analysis of the challenges that an Agile approach helps to solve was really interesting. I look forward to trying Qt on MCUs at some point.

hdonahueSpeaker

Score: 0 | 5 years ago | no reply

@meenal_b Thanks! I'm glad you enjoyed the talk!

leandropg

Score: 1 | 5 years ago | 1 reply

Hi Harrison... I never work with QT... In the slides you showed C++ Language... I can't integrate it in C language into AWS FreeRTOS? Thanks

hdonahueSpeaker

Score: 0 | 5 years ago | no reply

Hi @leandropg! Thanks for the question. Qt for MCUs supports FreeRTOS. Given so much work on MCU platforms is classically done in C, I see customers all the time that are using both. The build process involves leveraging the vendor toolchain (i.e. some flavor armgcc) or a premium build tool like IAR. Depending on how you're looking to integrate with C, it should be OK! If you want to give it a try through an evaulation, reach out to me! harrison.donahue@qt.io
Thanks

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