2025-08-27 · Noah Patel
Bringing driver owners into DMA reviews early
DMA issues are almost always interface issues. Start sessions with a literal signal diagram on the wall, not a slide deck. Let driver owners annotate where they assumed hardware behavior that never made it into the schematic notes.
Agree on a temporary trace vocabulary—short tokens written on sticky notes—that maps to your formal ALM language later. The translation step feels tedious but prevents ambiguous action items.
Capture decisions as testable statements. “Reduce callback coalescing” is vague; “coalesce only when FIFO watermark exceeds N for mode M” is something QA can script.
End each week with a visible decision ledger. Open questions should have named owners and calendar dates, not generic “TBD” placeholders that quietly expire.