A Data Driven Approach to
Rational Project Management using PSP/TSP.
The big challenge for most managers is to be made answerable for
ensuring the delivery of defect free product on time. Managers do not
have any control over several imponderables including the capability,
commitment and ‘mood’ of the engineers in the team on the one hand and
the clarity, stability and reasonableness which customers exhibit while
making their demands. In handling both aspects, Managers end up putting
‘heroic’ efforts repeatedly, project after project, hoping one day they
can ‘manage’ a project to perfection and bring work life balance in
their profession.
Current statistics (
Standish Reports,
Software Engineering Institute ) show that only around 30% of the
projects get completed on time and that too are delivered with an
average of 5 defects per Thousand Lines of Code. Some companies such as
Microsoft, Texas Instruments, have
reported the benefits of managing Projects using PSP/TSP
click to view.
The Personal Software
Process enhances the process skills of individual engineers who are able
to manage their quality and schedule at their own individual levels.
They also get convinced having experienced the benefits in the PSP
workshop that collecting and analyzing their performance data is in
their own individual interest.
The Team Software
Process builds a self-directed team that understands the goals of the
project, ensures each team member knows his/her role in the project,
participates in building the project strategy and the plan that it would
follow. The Team Software Process ensures that the weekly Team Status
meetings are productive by reviewing the project data that enables the
team and the manager to assess from very early stages the quality of the
product that is being built, the quantitative project progress in terms
of earned value of the project, the likely end date, the root causes of
the current status and corrective actions that can be taken. Some of the
results of applying TSP are as follows.
Table 9: Quality
|
Measure
|
TSP Projects Avg. Range
|
Typical Projects Avg . |
|
System test defects (defects/KLOC) |
0.4
0 to 0.9 |
15 |
|
Delivered defects (defects/KLOC) |
0.06
0 to 0.2 |
7.5 |
|
System test effort (% of total
effort) |
4%
2% to 7% |
40% |
|
System test schedule (% of total
duration) |
18%
8% to 25% |
40% |
|
Duration of system test (days/KLOC) |
0.5
0.2 to 0.8 |
NA |
|
Failure COQ |
17%
4% to 38% |
50% |
Source: SEI Technical
Report: The Team Software ProcessSM (TSPSM) in
Practice: A Summary of Recent Results
http://www.sei.cmu.edu/publications/documents/03.reports/
03tr014/03tr014chap05.html
References:
Winning With Software: An Executive Strategy by
Watts S. Humphrey
http://www.sei.cmu.edu/publications/books/process/winning-with-software.html
