Public Lecture - Managing software cost and quality with the Team Software Process
*More Details on TSP and PSP
The “Personal Software Process” (PSP) and the “Team Software Process” (TSP) are complementary methodologies developed by the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) at Carnegie Mellon University in the USA. These methodologies, closely aligned to the Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI), are being adopted by an increasing number of software development teams in various parts of the world. There is a growing body of evidence demonstrating the advantages of TSP/PSP adoption. These advantages include:
• Software development projects are completed within 10% or less of the scheduled date. The industry benchmark is in the range 27% to 112%
• The final cost of development projects is within 5% or less of the original budget. The industry benchmark is in the range 17% to 85%.
• Released code is likely to have 0 to 0.2 defects per 1,000 lines of source code. The industry benchmark is 1 to 7 defects per 1,000 lines of source code.
• System testing requires between 2% and 7% of the overall effort (time or cost) associated with a development project. The industry benchmark is typically 40%.
• Companies using TSP are able to accelerate CMMI adoption dramatically. Some organisations have progressed from maturity level 1 to 4 in less than 2 years. The normal time taken is 5 years or more.
There is growing evidence from international experience that TSP offers substantial benefit. Its suitability within the South African context was recently tested during a pilot programme at Nedbank and Dariel Technologies. The Joburg Centre for Software Engineering (JCSE) at Wits University, which launched a pilot TSP and PSP adoption programme in South Africa in 2008, supported with seed funding from the dti, now wants to expand this project into KZN and the Western Cape.