Many of the companies that have had a successful PACE (Performance and Capability Evaluation) have been Mexican. And several of these companies not only have implemented TSP in software development processes but also have done it in processes that are key to achieving successful projects and high-quality products. We're talking about processes like Requirements Analysis, High-Level Design, and Solution Architecture.
These first TSP implementations in processes that do not develop software shared the following experiences:
- They customized planning and quality metrics and committed to follow disciplined measurement activities, even when traditional tools and repositories were adjusted.
- On average, these organizations could have been defined as small and medium enterprises. But even as very small entities, these projects were based on self-directed teams committed to challenging and achievable goals and encouraged a successful cross-training that team members consciously followed.
- All the companies implemented TSP cycles for the first time in their organizations. Some started with non-development software projects in which virtually all productive roles in the organization (analysts, architects, developers, testers) participated, which substantially reduced the resistance to change and motivated senior executives to continue the TSP implementation in subsequent cycles of the projects.
This talk shares the challenges and solutions that we faced in these cases and how the circumstances of these projects reinforced the path toward cultural change promoted by TSP in the organizations.
