Sudhir Patnaik, Senior Engineering Manager, QA and
Balasubrahmanyam P, Software Engineer, QA, Intuit Technology Services.

Leveraging PSP/TSP Metrics to drive predictability and quality of product releases

Abstract:

There are varied industry standards and practices used for measuring the success of a project and these have evolved over time as Organizations have attained process maturity by adopting CMMi and ISO standards. However, one of the major issues that remain even today is in terms of predictability of a project timeline or schedules as well as delivering a product that can guarantee high level of quality. In recent times, we have seen the emergence of TSP/PSP as a powerful tool towards achieving predictability and quality.

The Team Software Process (TSP) helps the high-performance engineer to ensure quality software products, create secure software products and improve process management in an organization. Engineering groups use the TSP to apply integrated team concepts to the development of software-intensive systems. On the other hand, Personal Software Process (PSP) shows engineers how to manage the quality of their projects, make commitments they can meet, improve estimating and planning and reduce defects in their products. PSP can be used by engineers as a guide to a disciplined and structured approach to developing software. The PSP is a prerequisite for an organization planning to introduce the TSP. The PSP can be applied to many parts of the software development process, including but not limited to small-program development, requirement definition, document writing, systems tests, systems maintenance and enhancement of large software systems.

TSP/PSP is an organization-wide initiative started in the year 2006-2007 and recently was launched in Bangalore based product development COEs (Center of Excellence). One of such projects is a technology framework development – a brand new platform provider project that can service application development teams. In this new development initiative, TSP/PSP was launched and that helped this project meet its scheduled timeline as well as high level of quality goals. The authors in this paper would like to share their experience of going through this launch process and how it helped the entire team of test engineers and developers to achieve stringent quality goals and schedule by showcasing varied project metrics data one of which being “defect density” – a parameter used for measuring the quality of the product. It was a four-day launch process that walks teams and their managers through establishing goals, defining team roles, assessing risks and producing a team plan. Post launch, the TSP provided a defined process framework for managing, tracking and reporting the team's progress. As an example, at Intuit, teams find 70-90% of defects prior to system test. Amount of effort spent before code complete is 90% of the total effort spent. Teams have 25% less rework than average projects. TSP teams typically deliver agreed upon scope on time. TSP adopters had significantly more favorable views towards process improvement, quality and innovation compared to non-TSP users based on employee surveys.

The audience will get the following benefits from this article:

• How does TSP/PSP Metrics help in predictability of schedule and quality
• Understanding and practical implementation of PSP-TSP adoption.
• Quality comparison of TSP Vs Non-TSP projects.

Speaker Profiles:

Sudhir Patnaik

Sudhir has 13+ years of experience in academic research, software development and testing. Prior to joining Intuit, he was working as Group Test Manager at Infosys Technologies Ltd., Bangalore and at Accelrys - Bangalore R&D Center of Excellence as Director of Product Testing & Technical Services team responsible for testing of products in the Life Sciences domain. Other companies where he worked earlier include Misys Healthcare Systems Inc., Tucson, AZ and Siri Technologies, Bangalore. Sudhir has worked in different industry domain areas such as Aerospace, Logistics, Healthcare and Life Sciences involving client/server, legacy and Internet technologies. His area of experience in testing includes establishing test teams and test labs, developing testing strategies, test metrics, identifying automation opportunities, and management of the test life cycle. He has utilized various automated testing tools such as WinRunner, SilkTest and worked on varied and diverse platforms.

He has published & presented many articles in QAI, SEPG and STeP-IN Conferences in India. Sudhir is a member of Steering Committee in the STeP-IN Forum, Bangalore SPIN and Association For Software Testing (Cem Kaner). He has a Bachelors degree in Electrical Engineering and Master degree in Electronics & Communication from REC, Rourkela.

Sudhir is currently Senior Engineering Manager – QA at Intuit India managing testing of products developed in financial domain.

Balasubrahmanyam Pillalamarri

Balasubrahmanyam Pillalamarri has 5+ yrs of professional experience in QA & Testing. He worked with reputed organizations like Symphony Services, Bangalore and Intel, Bangalore. His professional experience includes work on various domains that include instant messaging, Wireless Networking, Finance and Telecom Cost Management. Balasubrahmanyam is currently working with Intuit Technology Services Pvt Ltd as Software Engineer–QA.

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