Trends in software process: the PSP and agile methods

Water cooler discussions often gravitate to trends-the "latest" software process, programming language, or Web development paradigm. Some of them justly deserve the title "trend" or "fad;" others do not. In this article, two practitioners share their experience with current, yet diverse, software process approaches that are starting to greatly affect the industry. One author describes Science Applications International Corporationʹs (SAIC) experience with the Personal Software Process. The other author shares Motorolaʹs experience with agile methods, a lighter-weight process approach. It appears that despite their diversity, both approaches have resulted in improved productivity and in similar or even higher-quality levels of the resulting products (from previous releases).