Evelien's Dagboek

Addicted to PSP

I have to admit it: I’m addicted to PSP. So what’s that? A new drug you haven’t heard about yet? No, don’t worry! PSP is the ‘Personal Software Process’. It is a way to develop software quicker and better and producing a better quality as well.

Creating software is my profession. I am always interested in ways to do that in a better way. So in the Summer of 1997 I discovered the Personal Software Process by Watts S. Humphrey. One of the great things about PSP is that you can improve your way of working as an individual, without having to involve the rest of the company.

PSP has two main points of focus: Planning&Tracking; and Quality. And both are handled in similar ways: You start out by making an estimate, record data while on the job, gather the data when you’re done and evaluate the way you did this job.

therefore it is important to gather detailed data on what you are doing. You can use those to make better estimates in the future. And it is important to learn something from the data you gathered to find ways to improve your way of working.

Good idea! Reading Mr. Humphrey’s book made me very enthusiastic. So even before finishing the book, I started gathering data a on my way of working. But that is a lot of work! When I got home I was often busy for twenty minutes to feed the data I had jotted down over the day into the computer. There had to be a better way to do this!

So I wrote a little program in ‘Visual Basic for Applications’ to ease the job. It is just an Excel sheet with a button you can click when you start on a new task. If you do that consistently you build up a whole database of information about what you did and how much time it took.

On April 30th… 1998 I got that working and from that moment on I continuously, day or night, work or holiday, Winter or Summer, recorded a load of data! This is not normal, we can call this an addiction…

But this weekend I was transferred from my old employer to the new one. So I was kind of expecting my company laptop to bail out at Sunday morning, 0:00 AM, but it turned out to be even worse! On Friday afternoon I already had a problem logging OFF. And all weekend the laptop was dead! That’s nice! I was not able to record my data. I did get symptoms of abstinence. I was pacing around, didn’t feel like doing anything, didn’t get a good sleep. Well,well, well,well, well,well,well…

Maybe I should quit the whole PSP-thing. Or maybe I should devote a page (or twenty) to it on my website. Anyway, this experience has made me think…

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