Team Software Process and Personal Software Process
The Team Software Process (TSP), along with the Personal Software Process, helps the high-performance engineer to...ensure quality software products...create secure software products...improve process management in an organization.
The first organization to report their results after using both PSP and TSP was Teradyne. Their return on investment (ROI) analysis indicates that by using PSP and TSP on two projects totaling 112 KLOC, they saved $5.3 million in engineering time, or approximately 120 hours/KLOC in integration, system, and field testing. Quality levels improved 20 times over prior projects and actual effort and schedule were within 8% of plan (early). Teradyne estimates the cost of PSP training to be one month per engineer....
PSP: A Self-Improvement Process for Engineers
Watts S. Humphrey
Most software-development groups have embarrassing records: by some accounts, more than half of all software projects are significantly late and over budget, and nearly a quarter of them are cancelled without ever being completed. Although developers recognize that unrealistic schedules, inadequate resources, and unstable requirements are often to blame for such failures, few know how to solve these problems. Fortunately, the Personal Software Process (PSP) provides a clear and proven solution. Comprising precise methods developed over many years by Watts S. Humphrey and the Software Engineering Institute (SEI), the PSP has successfully transformed work practices in a wide range of organizations and has already produced some striking results.
This book describes the PSP and is the definitive guide and reference for its latest iteration. PSP training focuses on the skills required by individual software engineers to improve their personal performance. Once learned and effectively applied, PSP-trained engineers are qualified to participate on a team using the Team Software Process (TSP), the methods for which are described in the final chapter of the book. The goal for both PSP and TSP is to give developers exactly what they need to deliver quality products on predictable schedules.
PSP: A Self-Improvement Process for Software Engineers presents a disciplined process for software engineers and anyone else involved in software development. This process includes defect management, comprehensive planning, and precise project tracking and reporting.
The book first scales down industrial software practices to fit the needs of the module-sized program development, then walks readers through a progressive sequence of practices that provide a sound foundation for large-scale software development. By doing the exercises in the book, and using the PSP methods described here to plan, evaluate, manage, and control the quality of your own work, you will be well prepared to apply those methods on ever larger and more critical projects.
Drawing on the author’s extensive experience helping organizations to achieve their development goals, and with the PSP benefits well illustrated, the book presents the process in carefully crafted steps. The first chapter describes overall principles and strategies. The next two explain how to follow a defined process, as well as how to gather and use the data required to manage a programming job. Several chapters then cover estimating and planning, followed by quality management and design. The last two chapters show how to put the PSP to work, and how to use it on a team project. A variety of support materials for the book, as described in the Preface, are available on the Web.
If you or your organization are looking for a way to improve your project success rate, the PSP could well be your answer.
Reading Software Development over lunch today I learned that Pres. Bush recently awarded software engineering guru Watts Humphrey one of this year’s National Medals of Technology. The President’s remarks included the statement, “Your work is making our country more competitive, more hopeful, and more prosperous....Humphrey’s signal achievement is perhaps his having laid the groundwork of the Capability Maturity Model for Software (SW-CMM), a framework for evaluating and promoting the effectiveness of software teams....The irony here is that the SW-CMM has probably done far more for foreign competitors of U.S. IT companies than it has for U.S. IT companies. South Asia has seized hold of SW-CMM certification as a key to successful outsourcing bids. Of the 80 or so SW-CMM Level-5 organizations in the world, 60 of these are on the Indian subcontinent.
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