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PSP(sm): A Self-Improvement Process for Software Engineers
- By Watts S. Humphrey
- Published Mar 3, 2005 by Addison-Wesley Professional. Part of the SEI Series in Software Engineering series.
- Copyright 2005
- Dimensions: 6-1/4x9-1/4
- Pages: 368
- Edition: 1st
- Book
- ISBN-10: 0-321-30549-3
- ISBN-13: 978-0-321-30549-7
- eBook (Adobe DRM)
- ISBN-10: 0-7686-8473-0
- ISBN-13: 978-0-7686-8473-5
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Product Author Bios
Known as “the father of software quality,” Watts S. Humphrey is the author of numerous influential books on the software-development process and software process improvement. Humphrey is a fellow of the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) at Carnegie Mellon University, where he founded the Software Process Program and provided the vision and early leadership for the original Capability Maturity Model (CMM). He also is the creator of the Personal Software Process (PSP) and Team Software Process (TSP). Recently, he was awarded the National Medal of Technology—the highest honor given by the president of the United States to America's leading innovators.
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.
PSPSM: 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.
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23 of 28 people found the following review helpful
Applies well in some but not all situations..., By
This review is from: PSP(sm): A Self-Improvement Process for Software Engineers (Hardcover)
As an IT professional and software developer, I'm all for standards and processes. PSP - A Self-Improvement Process for Software Engineers by Watts S. Humphrey (Addison-Wesley) outlines a personal methodology for improving your development efforts. But it's definitely not applicable to all environments...Chapter List: The Personal Process Strategy; The Baseline Personal Process; Measuring Software Size; Planning; Software Estimating; The PROBE Estimating Method; Software Planning; Software Quality; Design and Code Reviews; Software Design; The PSP Design Templates; Design Verification; Process Extensions; Using The Personal Software Process; Index From an overall perspective, I think the concepts in here are good and the book is well-written. Watts has devised a methodology that a developer can apply on their own to improve their coding, estimating, and defect resolution skills. This is done by extensive measurement and recording of statistic and time taken... Read more
18 of 22 people found the following review helpful
review before compiling?!, By
This review is from: PSP(sm): A Self-Improvement Process for Software Engineers (Hardcover)
The intent is to reduce the defect rate in software. With an emphasis on doing this when we have several million lines of source code. All the more so if the application might involve safety issues or be critical to its company's bottom line.Humphrey points out that the writing of such large code might typically follow practices used for code bodies orders of magnitude smaller. But that this leads to far too many defects. He explains that PSP offers a discipline for the individual programmer to follow. And how this can be scaled to a team of programmers. PSP stresses investing in design time and review time, relative to the actual coding time. It's big on writing down the times spent on these stages, so that you have actual quantities to see and from which to get metrics. You cannot improve what you cannot measure. The review time is considered a good investment, for finding bugs here is inherently more productive than relying on a downstream testing stage or... Read more
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Very good, By Juan Jose Cardenas (Lima, Peru.) - See all my reviews
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: PSP(sm): A Self-Improvement Process for Software Engineers (Hardcover)
If you use this book practices, in your every day work, with discipline and consistency, your performance as professional software developer will improve and your data will show it objectively. In my opinion this is a very good book and an excellent job from Mr. Humphrey.As Mr. Humphrey stated in this book, if you have another method to software developing and even more if you have data to support your method then you must use your method and avoid waste your time studying PSP. But if you don't have any other method to show o recomend is not polite with the reader simply say "find another university" . What the global software industry needs is that we stop arguing about what method is better and to understand that if we have a lots of methods, we have the opportunity to explore which one works well in a specific context and not well in other situation. Our industry needs people willing to taste new ideas to resolve our very old problems. Society... Read more |
Index
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Table of Contents
Preface xiii
Chapter 1: The Personal Process Strategy 1
1.1. The PSP’s Purpose 3
1.2. The Logic for a Software Engineering Discipline 4
1.3. Using Disciplined Development Practices 6
1.4. Operational Processes 6
1.5. Defining and Using a Personal Process 7
1.6. Learning to Use a Personal Process 8
1.7. Preparing for the Team Software Process 9
1.8. Summary 9
Reference 10
Chapter 2: The Baseline Personal Process 11
2.1. What Is a Process? 12
2.2. Defining Your Own Process 13
2.3. Baseline Process Contents 14
2.4. Why Forms Are Helpful 16
2.5. The PSP Process Elements 17
2.6. The PSP0 Process 18
2.7. PSP0 Measures 20
2.8. Time Recording 21
2.9. Defect Recording 24
2.10. The PSP0 Project Plan Summary 30
2.11. The Compile Phase 31
2.12. Incremental Development 32
2.13. PSP Tool Support 34
2.14. Summary 34
2.15. Exercises 34
Chapter 3: Measuring Software Size 35
3.1. Size Measures 35
3.2. Establishing a Database Counting Standard 40
3.3. Establishing a Line-of-Code Counting Standard 40
3.4. Size Accounting 42
3.5. Using Size Data 45
3.6. Calculating Productivity 47
3.7. Size Counters 48
3.8. Other Size Measures 53
3.9. Summary 54
3.10. Exercises 54
References 55
Chapter 4: Planning 57
4.1. The Planning Process 58
4.2. Why Make Plans? 59
4.3. What Is a Plan? 60
4.4. The Contents of a Software Plan 60
4.5. Planning a Software Project 62
4.6. The Conceptual Design 63
4.7. Plan Quality 65
4.8. Planning Issues 65
4.9. Summary 66
Reference 67
Chapter 5: Software Estimating 69
5.1. Size Estimating Principles 69
5.2. The Conceptual Design 70
5.3. Proxy-Based Estimating 71
5.4. Using Proxies in Estimating 75
5.5. Producing the Relative-Size Table 78
5.6. Estimating Considerations 80
5.7. Summary 84
Chapter 6: The PROBE Estimating Method 85
6.1. Estimating from Data 85
6.2. Proxy-Based Estimating 87
6.3. Estimating with Limited Data 95
6.4. An Estimating Example 100
6.5. Estimating Nonprogramming Tasks 102
6.6. Considerations in Using PROBE 105
6.7. Summary 108
6.8. Exercises 108
Chapter 7: Software Planning 109
7.1. Plan Requirements 109
7.2. Project and Period Plans 111
7.3. Producing the Schedule 113
7.4. Making the Schedule 115
7.5. Earned Value 119
7.6. An Earned Value Example 120
7.7. Comments on the EV Example 123
7.8. Estimating Accuracy 125
7.9. The Prediction Interval 126
7.10. Alerting Management to Changes 128
7.11. Planning Considerations 129
7.12. Summary 131
7.13. Exercises 132
References 132
Chapter 8: Software Quality 133
8.1. The PSP Quality Strategy 135
8.2. What Is Software Quality? 135
8.3. The Economics of Software Quality 136
8.4. Defect Types 141
8.5. Personal Quality Practices 142
8.6. Quality Measures 143
8.7. Quality Management 153
8.8. Personal Quality Management 154
8.9. Managing Product Quality 156
8.10. PSP Improvement Practices 157
8.11. Defect Prevention 158
8.12. Summary 160
References 161
Chapter 9: Design and Code Reviews 163
9.1. What Are Reviews? 164
9.2. Why Review Programs? 164
9.3. Review Principles 168
9.4. The PSP Code Review Process 173
9.5. The Code Review Checklist 176
9.6. Design Reviews 181
9.7. Design Review Principles 183
9.8. Review Measures 187
9.9. Review Issues 194
9.10. Summary 201
9.11. Exercises 202
References 202
Chapter 10: Software Design 203
10.1. What Is Design? 204
10.2. Why Design? 206
10.3. The Design Process 207
10.4. Design Levels 210
10.5. Design and Development Strategies 216
10.6. Design Quality 220
10.7. Summary 223
References 224
Chapter 11: The PSP Design Templates 225
11.1. Design Representation 226
11.2. The Design Templates 229
11.3. The Operational Specification Template (OST) 230
11.4. The Functional Specification Template (FST) 233
11.5. The State Specification Template (SST) 236
11.6. The Logic Specification Template (LST) 240
11.7. A State-Machine Design Example 241
11.8. Using the PSP Design Templates 246
11.9. Using the Design Templates in Large-Scale Design 248
11.10. Summary 250
11.11. Exercises 250
References 250
Chapter 12: Design Verification 253
12.1. Why Verify Programs? 254
12.2. Design Standards 257
12.3. Execution-Table Verification 258
12.4. Trace-Table Verification 262
12.5. Verifying State Machines 265
12.6. Loop Verification 271
12.7. Other Analytical Verification Methods 277
12.8. Verification Considerations 280
12.9. Summary 284
12.10. Exercises 284
References 285
Chapter 13: Process Extensions 287
13.1. Customizing the Development Process 289
13.2. Why Define a Process? 290
13.3. The PSP Process Strategy 291
13.4. Defining a Process 291
13.5. Process Evolution 294
13.6. Example Processes 298
13.7. Process Development Considerations 306
13.8. Summary 307
13.9. Exercises 308
References 308
Chapter 14: Using the Personal Software Process 309
14.1. Development Challenges 309
14.2. The Team Software Process (TSP) 313
14.3. The Logic of the TSP 314
14.4. Teambuilding 314
14.5. The TSP Launch Process 316
14.6. The TSP Coach 317
14.7. Managing Your Own Project 318
14.8. TSP Results 322
14.9. The Rewards of Teamwork 322
14.10. The TSP Team of One 323
14.11. Your Future in Software Engineering 326
References 327
Index 329
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