A training process for improving the quality of software projects developed by a practitioner

Background The quality of a software product depends on the quality of the software process followed in developing the product. Therefore, many higher education institutions (HEI) and software organizations have implemented software process improvement (SPI) training courses to improve the software quality. Objective Because the duration of a course is a concern for HEI and software organizations, we investigate whether the quality of software projects will be improved by reorganizing the activities of the ten assignments of the original personal software process (PSP) course into a modified PSP having fewer assignments (i.e., seven assignments). Method The assignments were developed by following a modified PSP with fewer assignments but including the phases, forms, standards, and logs suggested in the original PSP. The measurement of the quality of the software assignments was based on defect density. Results When the activities in the original PSP were reordered into fewer assignments, as practitioners progress through the PSP training, the defect density improved with statistical significance. Conclusions Our modified PSP could be applied in academy and industrial environments which are concerned in the sense of reducing the PSP training time.