Personal Software Process (PSP) - In Short

What is PSP ?

 PSP (Personal Software Process) provide a standard personal process structure for software developers.
 PSP consists of a set of methods, tables, scripts etc. that serve as a guideline for software developers to
plan, measure and manage their work, including how to define their processes and measure quality and productivity.
 PSP provides software engineers disciplined methods for improving personal software development process.

PSP helps software engineers to –

 Improve their estimating and planning skill.
 Make commitment they can keep.
 Manage the quality of their product.
 Reduce the number of defects in their work.
 PSP represents metrics based approach to software engineering.
 PSP deals with software engineers to identify the errors early and to understand the types of errors.

1. PSP Activities

1. Planning: This activity isolates requirements and specifications to be decided prior to the development
   and estimates the size and the cost of the project. Defect estimation is also made. Development tasks
   are identified and scheduled is created.
2. High-Level Design: External specifications and requirements for each component to be constructed
   and developed. Component design is also created. Prototypes are developed if requirements are
   complex.
3. High Level Design Review: Formal verification methods are applied to uncover errors in the design.
4. Development: The component level design is reviewed and refined. The code is generated, reviewed,
   compiled and tested.
5. Postmortem: Using Metrics and measures the effectiveness of the process is determined. It provides
   guidance for modification of process and its improvement.

2. Goal of PSP

The goal of PSP is to provide software engineers with disciplined methods for improving personal
software development.

3. Advantages of PSP

1. PSP represents a disciplined, metrics-based approach to software engineering.
2. PSP resulting improvement in software engineering productivity and software quality are significant.

3. It helps the software engineers in developing high quality software products.
4. It guides the engineer for personal improvement.
5. It gives the confidence to do the job the way you know you should.
6. The PSP gives the command over your work.

4. Disadvantages of PSP

1. PSP is intellectually challenging and demands a level of commitment which is always not possible
   to obtain.

2. Training for PSP is lengthy and costs for the training are high.
3. Required level of measurement is culturally difficult.