A Discipline for Software Engineering (SEI Series in Software Engineering) [Englisch] [Gebundene Ausgabe]

How does PSP align to XP? Both approaches focus heavily on project planning and estimating, and controlling quality, cost and schedule. Both approaches also use metrics as a baseline and past performance to predict future productivity and quality during the planning and estimation phases of new projects. Moreover, both approaches impose a rigorous discipline at a low level in the development process - PSP at the individual level and XP at the 2-person paired team level. An excellent book on XP that supports this premise is Planning Extreme Programming by Kent Beck and Martin Fowler.

The methods that Mr. Humphrey proposes in this book are the building blocks of an effective XP organization because much of the metrics he proposes for capture, analysis and tracking are the very ones that are key to XP. These methods add the "discipline" into the development process, and "engineering" into the quality approach to any development effort, regardless of whether the methods are aligned to XP or any other methodology. Further, the disciplined engineering approach will provide organizations striving for capability maturity model (CMM) level 4 (managed) or 5 (optimizing) with some valuable tools and techniques with which to achieve these higher levels of maturity. Of course, this is also useful to organizations that are implementing SPICE (Software Process Improvement Capability dEtermination), organizing software process engineering groups, or implementing mature project management methods for development projects.

I agree with a previous reviewer that development is also a social and cognitive discipline, but it is not solely those. The social and cognitive approach will only get you so far. The same is true of the disciplined engineering approach. You need both, and this book is a valuable work for the latter.

In my opinion this book is probably more valuable today then when it was first published because the approach required too much rigor for most organizations to adopt. However, with the growing movement towards XP I believe that this book will add details and techniques that are only superficially addressed in the XP body of knowledge and literature. If you are a proponent of XP this book provides some proven, concrete techniques. If you are striving for higher levels of capability maturity this book (and the companion, Introducing the Team Software Process by Mr. Humphrey) will give you the tools to get to managed, and from there to optimizing. I believe this book is a 5-star classic that was ahead of its time.

A quote from the author, "In addition to providing the data you need to handle management pressure, the PSP offers many other potential benefits as follows: The insight you gain into your talents and abilities; The stimulation of an almost unlimited stream of improvement ideas; The framework it provides for personal improvement; The degree of control you gain over your work; The feeling of pride and personal accomplishment; An improved basis for effective teamwork; The conviction to do the job the way you know you should."

The book is an ode to measurement. Humphrey doesn't justify or explain his measurement theory, though. He seems more intent on telling us what to do than on helping us ask questions like "What do these numbers mean?" He proposes ways to measure quality, but not ways to understand goodness; ways to measure productivity, but not ways to understand productivity in relation to our ambitions. Reflection, inspiration, collaboration, dialogue, discovery, invention, ingenuity, all of these vital processes are ignored in his calculus. But since his calculus is embedded in a prescription for what we're supposed to do, anything left out is driven underground (or underwater, like an animal that doesn't get a ticket for Noah's Ark). It's a good thing for the technology that so few people are disciplined in the way Humphrey proposes.

I just want to point out that there is an alternative to the Brave New World of Watts Humphrey and the SEI. Search for books by Gerald Weinberg and you'll find a polar opposite view of software engineering as a social and cognitive discipline. Weinberg's book on measurement "Quality Software Management, Vol. 2: First-Order Measurement" is a must read.

I also recommend "Things That Make Us Smart" and "Cognition in the Wild", two books that startled me by showing how much cognitive psychology could help the software engingeering craft, if ever we computer people but wake up and take notice.

Discipline is important in any search for excellence. Let's build our discipline on a sound and meaningful foundation, eh?