to team organization. They both enable the team to: Define their goals and standards. Estimate and schedule the work. Determine realistic and attainable schedules. Make plans and process improvements. Both Agile and the TSP/PSP share the idea of team members taking responsibility for their own work and working together to agree on a realistic plan, creating an environment of trust and accountability. However, the TSP/PSP differs from Agile in its emphasis on documenting the process and its use of data for predicting and defining project schedules. Quality High-quality software is the goal of the PSP, and quality is measured in terms of defects. For the PSP, a quality process should produce low-defect software that meets the user needs. The PSP phase structure enables PSP developers to catch defects early. By catching defects early, the PSP can reduce the amount of time spent in later phases, such as Test. The PSP theory is that it is more economical and effective to remove defects as close as possible to where and when they were injected, so software engineers are encouraged to conduct personal reviews for each phase of development. Therefore, the PSP phase structure includes two review phases: Design Review Code Review To do an effective review, you need to follow a structured review process. The PSP recommends using checklists to help developers to consistently follow an orderly procedure. The PSP follows the premise that when people make mistakes, their errors are usually predictable, so PSP developers can personalize their checklists to target their own common errors. Software engineers are also expected to complete process improvement proposals, to identify areas of weakness in their current performance that they should target for improvement. Historical project data, which exposes where time is spent and defects introduced, help developers to identify areas to improve. PSP developers are also expected to conduct personal reviews before their work undergoes a peer or team review. Certification A certification covering PSP is offered by the SEI at Carnegie Mellon University. The steps to becoming an SEI-Certified PSP Developer are: learn the PSP; take the certification exam; maintain credentials. The PSP Developer examination is based on concepts found in the PSP Body of Knowledge. The SEI maintains an FAQ on certification. See also Agile software development Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) Carnegie Mellon University Proxy-based estimating (PROBE) Software Engineering Institute (SEI) Team software process (TSP) Watts Humphrey References Further reading