A Discipline for Software Engineering Review

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A Discipline for Software Engineering ReviewThis book's title contains two key words that are woefully missing from most development projects: "discipline" and "engineering". With this book Mr. Humphrey introduced the personal software process (PSP), which subsequently spawned the team software process (TSP). Although the material is over 6 years old and does not seem to have gained wide acceptance in commercial development and project environments, it provides a roadmap to effectively integrating the increasingly popular extreme programming (XP)approach that was developed by Kent Beck.
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 Discipline for Software Engineering OverviewThis book from Watts Humphrey broadens his disciplined approach to software engineering. In his earlier book, Managing the Software Process, Humphrey developed concrete methods for managing software development and maintenance. These methods, now commonly practiced, provide programmers and managers specific steps for evaluating and improving their software capabilities. In this book, he scales down those methods to a personal level, helping software practitioners develop the skills and habits they need to plan, track, and analyze large and complex projects more carefully and successfully.

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