My Contribution To The NUM Navigation System Bug Fixing Project

Scaling up from 3 to 33 people in less than a month.

Cavour Aircraft Carrier

I was called to support the embedded project of a large IT company that won the job of bug fixing for the navigation system of the Cavour Aircraft Carrier, in the scope of NUM project.

NUM is an acronym for Nuova Unita’ Maggiore (della Marina), in english New Major Unit (of Military Marine).

Unpredictable Start Date

As always happens, the startup was not predictable, and sometimes won commitments never start, so large companies cannot make staffing until they get the actual request of startup.

As a result, on a day got a pass to go on, and there was a need to replicate the environment quickly inside, define the secure communication with the Navy, to get and send back stuff, and support the scaling up of the team, while new colleagues were put on board of the project.

The team started with 3 pioneers, 2 were there to get knowledge on the software components ad 1 (me) to support the environment replication and to support the scaling up of team while new software specialists were found withing the company.

Team Scaling Up

The team scaled up from 3 to 33 persons in one month as we had a bug fixing budget to comply by the day one.

To support this escalation I, as always, replicated the environment using VMware Desktop Products. This is relevant because this kind virtualization can be installed on simple ordinary resumed consumer PC.

If the money to get a pro server e.g. a DL380, is not a problem, the time that can be needed to get it on site in a great company, following the purchase rules, can be too much and can delay out the time available to go on.

The project went on for six months and already in the 1st month, we were able to send back the requested fixes.