Oil-Field Services' Data Acquisition System – A Globally Distributed Development

Schlumberger's Oilfield Services' (OFS) data acquisition system is an integrated software system for acquiring, processing and delivering data from downhole tools, either during drilling or through wireline (i.e., electrical) cables. The project is largely distributed across six R&D centers in the US, France, Japan and China. Each center has sub-projects that have a clearly defined responsibility with either framework or application-components developments. All sub-projects share the common master plan for both development and testing. Furthermore, all unit tests and "Level-1" application-component tests for particular applications are globally distributed and owned by each sub-project team. Together with the master test plan, a rigorous application-component test procedure/process is also in place to guarantee the success of the final system integration tests. Results from the distributed developments and the distributed first-level tests are finally assembled in one place, Beijing, for system integration and acceptance tests.