Two years after the Mexican government launched its unprecedented program to build a national reputation as a provider of IT products and services using the SEI Team Software Process (TSP) methodology, early results from pilot projects show an increase in high-quality, low-defect software developed on schedule and with improved team productivity.

These improvements are the result of a strategic alliance forged in 2006 between the SEI and Mexico’s leading private university, Instituto Tecnológico de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey (Tec de Monterrey), and enthusiastically supported by the Mexican national government, to advance the state of software engineering practice. The goal of the alliance is to position the Mexican software industry as an international competitor in the global IT outsourcing market by introducing TSP as a component of Mexico’s Program for the Development of the Software Industry (PROSOFT).

Key to schedule success in the pilot TSP teams was overall high product quality; several TSP projects had no defects in system or acceptance test.

While industry statistics show that over half of all software projects are more than 100 percent late or are canceled, in these TSP pilot projects, teams delivered their products on average 2 percent later than they had planned, with some as much as 27 percent earlier. Key to schedule success in the pilot TSP teams was overall high product quality; several TSP projects had no defects in system or acceptance test. (Read the complete results here.)

Softtek, a global provider of IT and business process services, participated in the pilot TSP projects and had a defect rate of 0.038 per thousand lines of code.

TSP has also helped to motivate development staff and management. Developers said they prefer the work environment of a TSP team. Management appreciated the depth of the data and the reliability of status reports. Low worker attrition, a relative strength of Mexico, was not only maintained, but enhanced. One company survey of employees found the TSP pilot team to have the highest job satisfaction in the plant.

Initially developed at the SEI by Watts Humphrey, TSP is a process technology that guides teams in reducing time to market, increasing productivity, improving cost, schedule performance, and product quality, accelerating process improvement, and reducing professional staff shortages.

A TSP team has an error rate in deadlines to deliver projects of -10 percent to 5 percent, whereas those without TSP/PSP have an error rate of 140 percent. TSP works in conjunction with the Personal Software Process (PSP), through which individual engineers can measure and enhance their performance. Both were created as a way to bring CMMI principles to teams and individuals.

“You need to differentiate yourself to compete. Mexico plans to differentiate itself through its largest competitive advantage—the TSP,” said Ivette Garcia, the Director of Mexico’s Digital Economy. The competitive advantage will come through reduced development time, superior quality, real-time interaction, lower attrition rate, and trust in Mexico’s high-performance knowledge workers and teams.

As one of the next steps in the national initiative, Tec de Monterrey is piloting not only an accelerated process improvement method using TSP to implement CMMI called TSP-Based CMMI Accelerated Improvement Method (TC-AIM) but also a TSP organizational evaluation and certification (TSPOEC). TC-AIM will make CMMI process improvement accessible to small- and medium-size enterprises (SMEs). Organizational certification will provide objective insight into the performance of an organization’s products and projects. Taken together, TC-AIM and TSP-OEC will make process improvement and CMMI recognition cost effective for the SMEs.