Personal Software Process

Measures represent important data in all engineering disciplines. This data allows engineers to understand how things work and how to make changes to produce desired results. In software engineering, it is difficult to collect useful measures because developers do not consider it an important activity, compared to coding. Moreover, manual collected data is often affected by errors, making it unusable. The shortage of automated tools for collecting and analyzing measures does not contribute to the evolution of software engineering. We present PROM (PRO Metrics), an automated tool for collecting and analyzing software metrics as well as personal software process (PSP) data. The tool uses an architecture based on plug-ins that automatically collects data from development tools.

The Constructive Cost Model COCOMO II and the PROxy Based Estimating model PROBE, were validated and calibrated based on short-term software projects developed by twenty one organizations at four cities in the central-west Colombian region, Manizales, Pereira, Armenia y Cali. The software development was embedded within a workshop based on the Personal Software Process PSP that last four weeks and includes work in class and work outside class. The COCOMO II statistical analysis includes the validation of the existing COCOMO II 1997 and 2000 calibrations, and the calibration of COCOMO II 2000 using CALICO. The PROBE statistical analysis produces object categories for Java and Php programming languages, regarding function and size, but cannot validate existing categories for Object Pascal and C++.

Process improvements within software development occur at three different levels: the organizational level, the project/team level, and at the individual engineer -- or personal -- level. The Software Engineering Institute (SEI) of Carnegie Mellon University has developed process improvement models tailored to each of these levels. The Capability Maturity Model (CMM) 3 deals with organization issues, the Team Software Process (TSP)1, currently under validation testing, address improvements in project or team development processes, and the Personal Software Process (PSP)1. The focus of this paper is on individual software engineer's issues addressed by the PSP. The Personal Software Process (PSP) provides a framework that individual software engineers can use to define, instrument, and continuously improve their individual processes. After five years of experience in teaching PSP in both academic and industry settings, we have gained some insights into the challenges and rewards...

International Conference on Emerging Practices in Software Process & Architecture (SOFTPA 2022) is an emerging practice in Software Development life cycle adopted by various software organizations to develop an environment of continuous deployment and delivery within time. There are several software development processes that practice the concept of continuous improvement and automation to maintain the operational stability and smooth flow of software delivery.

This research covers the technical and soft skills required in  software  development,  a  globally  in-demand  activity.  These  skills  are  required  to  efficiently  perform  in  a  very globalized,  competitive  field.  Previous  studies  show  the existence  of  a  gap  between  industry  and  academia.  Training  centers  provide  professionals  with  technical  skills, but as of late, the need for soft skills has become apparent,  making  it  important  to  study  and  find  ways  to embed them into the professionals who join the industry. The  application  of  Personal  Software  Process  (PSP) methodology  helps  students  to  strengthen  their  skills  in  the software development process, however, the method is not widespread in academia nor industry.  This article shows  the  importance  of  soft  skills,  according  to  Latin  American companies, and how PSP can reduce the skills gap

(U) This paper is an overview of the process improvement efforts of the Naval Air Systems Command’s (NAVAIR) Air 4.0, Research and Engineering Competency. It focuses on 24 software engineering teams within the U.S., and specifically on the six teams that were early adopters: the AV-8B Joint System Support Activity; the E-2C, EA-6B, P-3C, and Tactical Aircraft Electronic Warfare Software Support Activities; and the F/A-18 Software Development Task Team. These teams ranged in size from less than 10, to more than 70 NAVAIR software engineers and support contractors. The process improvement efforts described in this paper began in the 1990s and early 2000s. Their process improvement tool sets included the Capability Maturity Model, the Capability Maturity Model (CMM)® Integration, the Personal Software Process (PSP), the Team Software Process (TSP), the Earned Value Management System (EVMS), the High Performance Organization, and the Team Software Process for Multiple Teams (TSPm)SM. 

(U) By 2005, the early adopters had achieved impressive results: the first CMM Level 5 rating in the Navy, the second EVMS certification in the Federal Government, two teams achieving CMM Level 4 in less than half the normal time, reductions in software defect densities between 22 and 48%, reductions in the variances of the actual cost and schedule to within 10% of the estimates, and two TSP software teams realizing a net combined savings of $2.746 million with the conclusion of their first TSP software development projects. These cost savings were six times the cost of AV-8B’s and P-3C’s investment in training and startup of PSP and TSP. 

(U) The successes that NAVAIR’s Air 4.0, Research and Engineering Competency, enjoyed helped to create a culture that is both interested in the continued pursuit and advancement of process improvement within its ranks, and desiring to spread process improvement to the larger organization.

TxP was created by NAVAIR to help non-software teams define their own customized team processes, similar to the TSP process enjoyed by software teams. It takes time for a team to define a customized team process, and during this time, postmortem analysis needs to evolve as the team’s customized process evolves. These postmortems will give the team the insight required to see where it has improved, and where it needs to focus its future improvement efforts on its way to standing up its customized team process.