Personal Software Process Use in Organizations

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Personal Software ProcessUse in Organizations

• CIS 376
• Bruce R. Maxim
• UM-Dearborn

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• These notes are based on
• Introduction to the
• Personal Software Process
• Watts S. Humphrey
• Addison-Wesley Longman (1997)

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Personal PSP Implications

• If you seek personal excellence, the PSP can help
  you to attain it.
• By defining and measuring your work, you gain the
  knowledge to improve your personal performance.
• The question is, do you want to improve?

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Personal PSP Implications

• To consistently improve, you must critically
  examine your own performance.
• To do this, you need a process framework and
  performance measurements.
• The PSP provides a suitable framework and set of
  measurements.

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Personal PSP Implications

• As a software professional you need to
• make commitments you can meet
• deal with unreasonable commitment pressures
• review status and plans with customers, managers,
  and coworkers
• The PSP will help you to perform professionally
  even when your customers, managers, or coworkers
  do not.

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Personal PSP Implications

• The PSP involves change and change involves risk.
• your methods may have sufficed in the past
• no one else may use disciplined personal
  practices
• But the problems of the future will be more
  challenging than those of today.
• will your current methods be adequate?
• do you know a better way?

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Personal PSP Implications

• In using the PSP, you may face resistance.
• do you have a supportive environment?
• does your management agree with your interest in
  personal improvement?
• Your PSP efforts will be most rewarding when your
  management and your teammates share your
  interests and objectives.

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The Costs of the PSP

• The time investment
• process development takes about 1 to 2 hours per
  form and script
• process updates will be needed at least every 3
  months
• data entry and analysis will take about an hour
  for each PSP-sized project

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The Costs of the PSP

• The emotional investment
• the PSP takes a lot of work
• there will be occasional frustrations
• You will clearly see your own limitations
• if you cant face your personal limitations, you
  should not use the PSP
• and perhaps you should reconsider your decision
  to be a software engineer

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The Benefits of the PSP

• Insight
• you will better understand your strengths and
  weaknesses
• you will be better able to maximize your assets
• the PSP will help you to objectively deal with
  your weaknesses

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The Benefits of the PSP

• Ideas
• by defining your process, you can control it
• you can then act like a process owner
• your critical facilities will be in gear
• you will unconsciously observe your working self
• you will see many ways to improve your process
  and your performance

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The Benefits of the PSP

• Improvement framework
• a defined process provides a language for
  thinking about your work
• you can better see how the process parts relate
• you can better focus on priority areas for
  improvement

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The Benefits of the PSP

• Personal control
• you will have a planning framework
• you will have data on which to base your plans
• your plans will be more reliable
• you will be better able to track your status
• you will be better able to manage your work

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The Benefits of the PSP

• Accomplishments and personal bests
• you will recognize your personal bests
• you will better understand how to repeat and to
  surpass them
• you will see where and how you have improved
• you will have your own personal improvement goals
  
• you will have the satisfaction that comes with
  knowing you are doing superior work

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The Benefits of the PSP

• When your teams processes are defined
• you can better back up and support each other
• you will more precisely relate to each other
• you will no longer need to protect yourself from
  your peers failures
• they wont need to protect against your failures
• Teams perform better when they can concentrate on
  the job and not worry about being defensive.

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Using the PSP in an Organization

• Introducing the PSP into an organization involves
  2 situations.
• the solo PSP performer - you are the only person
  using the PSP in your organization
• the lone PSP team - your team uses the PSP but
  they are the only team in the organization to do
  so
• You will also need management support for PSP
  introduction.

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The Solo PSP Performer

• It is hard to maintain personal discipline
  without the support of peers and managers.
• It is easy to get discouraged by a slow rate of
  personal progress.
• Your peers may kid you for wasting your time with
  the PSP.

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The Solo PSP Performer

• If you are not confident that the PSP helps you,
  it will be hard to withstand such criticism.
• normal statistical fluctuations will seem like
  major disasters
• instead of learning from your mistakes you may
  get defensive about them
• Until you have data to support the benefits of
  the PSP, you would be wise to say little about it.

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The Lone PSP Team

• When your team has been trained in the PSP, you
  will have a powerful base of support.
• You will be able to
• review each others work
• share process improvement ideas and results
• celebrate successes
• get support when you need it

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The Lone PSP Team

• Be cautious about describing your results. Other
  groups may
• critique your results
• argue that they already do better work
• They are probably comparing their occasional best
  results with your normal performance.
• Without consistent data, such comparisons are
  meaningless and should be avoided.

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The Lone PSP Team

• If your results are superior, others may feel
  defensive.
• Be careful not to seem critical of other peoples
  work
• do not imply that your results apply to them
• suggest they try the PSP for themselves
• Concentrate on how the PSP has helped you to
  improve

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Organizational PSP Support

• To be most effective, you will need
  organizational support.
• education and training
• database and analysis
• process definition
• tools
• To get these, you will need managements help.

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Organizational PSP Support

• You may have trouble getting management support
  unless
• they see your work as a prototype for the
  organization
• you have data to demonstrate the benefits of the
  PSP for your team
• Seek to interest others in exploring the PSP
• other projects
• SQA and the SEPG

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Organizational PSP Support

• Support champions on other teams who wish to try
  the PSP.
• Seek the support of the process, quality
  assurance, and training groups.
• When other groups are interested in the PSP,
  management will be more willing to support you.

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Introducing the PSP part 1

• In getting management support, show enough of
  your own and other groups data to convince them
  that
• there are important benefits
• the costs are controllable
• When they understand the potential value of the
  PSP, they will more likely provide support for
  long enough to produce measurable results.

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Introducing the PSP part 2

• In introducing the PSP, it is essential that
• it be introduced with a formal course
• all professionals voluntarily participate
• the engineers be given time to do the work
• the managers provide weekly support and
  encouragement to their engineers to complete the
  PSP exercises
• the engineers personal data be respected as
  their private property

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Introducing the PSP part 3

• Where possible, do the PSP training by project
  team.
• Attempt to build clusters of PSP-trained teams
  that can reinforce and support each other.
• In selecting the initial projects, try to pick
  ones that are not in perpetual crisis.

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Introducing the PSP part 4

• After PSP training, adapt the PSP to each
  project by
• measuring and planning the current process
• adjusting PSP2.1 or PSP3 to the project needs
• testing each process change before general
  introduction
• planning for continuous process improvement