JCSE/DTI visits Mexico and USA
The JCSE leads SA delegation to Mexico and USA on as part of TSP exploratory trip.
27 May 2008
The Joburg Centre for Software Engineering (JCSE) at Wits University is currently leading a fact-finding mission from South Africa to Mexico and the United States, visiting various universities and companies to find out more about the Team Software Process (TSP).
Professor Barry Dwolatzky, JCSE Director, says the delegation, which left yesterday, will include representatives from the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), the Central University of Technology, Nedbank and UCS Software Manufacturing.
"The aim of the trip is to find out more about the TSP and PSP (Personal Software Process) which are methodologies developed at the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) in the USA to assist companies in dramatically improving their software development processes," Dwolatzky says.
Mexico:
The delegation will begin its trip by going to a conference in Mexico City at where a national TSP roll-out in Mexico will be launched. This launch follows a two year pilot programme that was run by the SEI, the Tecnologico de Monterrey University, the Mexican government and companies from the Mexican IT industry.
"The delegation will be meeting with many of the people involved in the Mexican pilot including Jim Over, Head of the TSP Initiative at the SEI, who came out to South Africa earlier this year. A meeting will also be held with Watts Humphrey, the internationally renowned software engineering expert who developed TSP and PSP at the SEI," Dwolatzky says.
Discussions will also be held with the Mexican government and companies from the Mexican IT industry on TSP and the possible impact it may have on an IT sector in a developing nation like Mexico.
In the United States:
From there the delegation is going to San Francisco in the United States where it will be meeting with senior people from Adobe and Intuit (creators of Quick Books accounting software), which both have long standing TSP programmes, to see how TSP works in practice within a company.
The delegation will then go through to the SEI in Pittsburgh, where it will meet with various other people involved in TSP and PSP Initiative.
TSP in SA:
The point of the trip is to learn more about TSP and see whether it is a viable methodology to bring to South Africa. Although none of the parties coming on the trip have yet made any commitments regarding TSP adoption in South Africa, we all wish to collect detailed information, Dwolatzky says.
"We're looking to learn directly from the people who developed the methodologies and those who have used it so we can make a decision on bringing TSP to South Africa. The JCSE may well look to duplicate the Mexico pilot or something similar in a South African context in future," he says.
Explaining TSP:
It begins with PSP where individual developers are taught a methodology, which assists them in developing their skills as developers and helps to dramatically improve the quality of their code. TSP then assists PSP-trained developers with working together on projects to develop quality applications and systems in line with the specified costs and timeframes of the project.
The TSP and PSP methodologies have been shown to improve the quality of software by between two and twenty times based on the average number of defects per 1000 lines of code, provides a two to 10 times reduction in software testing time and accelerate a company's progress through the maturity levels of CMMI by as much as 60 percent, Dwolatzky explains.