[53] in I/T Delivery
"Results of Applying the Personal Software Process"
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (David M. Rosenberg)
Wed May 7 12:33:56 1997
Date: Wed, 7 May 1997 12:33:10 -0400
To: MR-DEVEL@mitvma.mit.edu
From: "David M. Rosenberg" <Rosenberg@MIT.EDU>
Cc: itlt@MIT.EDU, delivery@MIT.EDU, it-project-news@MIT.EDU, ppage@MIT.EDU,
picardi@MIT.EDU, fuller@MIT.EDU, huxley@mitvmc.mit.edu
A recent message raised the issue of having individual developers get
practice planning tasks and estimating the time that those tasks will take.
Something called the "Personal Software Process" (PSP) is a framework
developed at the Software Engineering Institute for helping people plan,
estimate (not guess!) and track their work and produce high-quality
products. There is an article in the current issue of (IEEE) Computer which
describes the results to date of using PSP in three companies (Advanced
Information Services, Motorola Paging Products Group, and Union Switch &
Signal).
Learning PSP is estimated to take about 125 hours. You can't learn PSP from
an article, an evening talk, or a full day lecture. This article doesn't
attempt to teach PSP; it attempts to motivate learning PSP by describing
the differences between pre-PSP performance and post-PSP performance.
The article is "Results of Applying the Personal Software Process" by Pat
Ferguson, Watts Humphrey, Soheil Khajenoori, Susan Macke, and Annette
Matvya. It appears on pages 24-31 of the May 1997 issue (Volume 30, Number
5) of (IEEE) Computer magazine. I could send copies to people who want to
read it.
The same May 1997 issue of IEEE Computer magazine also contains an article
titled "Risk Management: Moving Beyond Process" by Art Gemmer. It appears
on pages 33-43. It is relevant to people interested in project management.
/David M. Rosenberg rosenberg@mit.edu 1-617-253-8054
