Light Reading

I'm taking a class right now on software requirements engineering (does one actually engineer the requirements, or did they just want to make this class sound hard?) and I came across something I might use with the web crawler project.

In the chapter about "The Software Process" which talks about the processes necessary for an individual or team to succeed at building a quality piece of software or system, I came across the Personal Software Process, or PSP. The book simply states that every developer has a process, whether anyone can see it or not. Either way, there is a proper way to go about producing software at a personal level, and here is the gist (Pressman, 2005, p.37):

Planning. This activity isolates requirements and, based on these, develops both size and resource estimates. In addition, a defect estimate (the number of defects projected for the work) is made. All metrics are recorded on worksheets or templates. Finally, development tasks are identified and a project schedule is created.
High-level design. External specifications for each component to be constructed are developed and a component design is created. Prototypes are build when uncertainty exists. All issures are recorded and tracked.
High-level design review. Formal verification methods... are applied to uncover errors in the design. Metrics are maintained for all important tasks and work results.
Development. The component level design is refined and reviewed. Code is generated, reviewed, compiled, and tested. Metrics are maintained for all important tasks and work results.
Postmortem. Using the measures and metrics collected (a substantial amount of data that shoul be analyzed statistically), the effectiveness of the process is determined. Measures and metrics should provide guidance for modifying the process to improve its effectiveness.

I'm not sure if what I'm doing will fit into this personal model of development, but it's thought provoking. Even if I don't collect data about what my problems might be and then analyze the data about what actually went wrong, I can still hold myself to some kind of process. Even though I don't have a deadline or an antsy customer to deliver this to, I can possibly eliminate shortfalls if I just think it out before delving into code.

But then what fun would that be?


Reference (in our favorite APA format):

Pressman, R.S. (2005). Software engineering: A practitioner's approach. New York: McGraw-Hill.