Does anybody actually use the PSP (Personal Software Process)?

Question

I've been reading a bit about this recently but it looks to be a bit heavy. Does anybody have real world experience using it?

Are there any light weight alternatives?

Answer 1

The Personal Software Process itself is a subset of the Capability Maturity Model (CMM) processes. There are no light weight alternatives available as of now.

Answer 2

The Personal Software Process is a personal improvement process. The full-blown PSP is quite heavy and there are several forms, templates, and documents associated with it. However, a key point is that you are supposed to tailor the PSP to your specific needs.

Typically, when you are learning about the PSP (especially if you are learning it in a course), you will use the full PSP with all of its forms. However, as Watts S. Humphrey says in "PSP: A Self-Improvement Process for Software Engineers", it's important to "use a process that both works for you and produces the desired results". Even for an individual, multiple projects will probably require variations on the process in order to achieve the results you want to.

In the book I mentioned above, "PSP: A Self Improvement Process for Software Engineers", the steps that you should follow when defining your own process are:

• Determine needs and priorities
• Define objectives, goals, and quality criteria
• Characterize the current process
• Characterize the target process
• Establish a strategy to develop the process
• Validate the process
• Enhance the process

If you are familiar with several process models, it should be fairly easy to take pieces from all of them and create a process or workflow that works on your particular project. If you want more advice, I would suggest picking up the book. There's an entire chapter dedicated to extending and modifying the PSP as well as creating your own process.