Incorporating a Disciplined Software Development Process In to

As the processing power of computers has increased, more complex and larger problems have been attached. Lack of a disciplined approach to solution of such problems has created a situation referred to "software crisis". That is, software products have been behind schedule, over the budget and unreliable. Software Engineering Institute (SEI) through Capability Maturity Model (CMM) has addressed a software organization's capability with five maturity levels [1]. CMM is based on a team approach to software production. Watts Humphrey, in the Personal Software Process (PSP) concept, addresses the roles and processes that individual team members should follow in order to be an effective member of a team [2]. PSP is being taught to software engineers at different industries and also to graduate students in mainly Master of Software Engineering (MSE) programs. In our experiment, we started teaching a simplified version of PSP to freshmen in the Computer Science program. The result of our experiment has shown that the students have gained better time management and defect management skills, which are the base for more effective software production. This paper describes how to incorporate a disciplined software development process into the first introductory computer science programming courses, with the major emphasis on the first course. We will also share some of our initial results.