An essential aspect of the PSIP process is defining goals and tracking progress. A Progress Tracking Cards (PTC) is a brief structured document that lists concrete steps toward a specific productivity and sustainability goal.
Selecting the specific productivity or sustainability improvement effort to pursue is critical. A poor selection can result in no progress, or in a trivial result. A key analysis step is to make sure that any proposed improvement effort is not blocked by some other impediment that must be addressed first. As you define a progress tracking card, discuss possible impediments with the team. If there is an impediment, you may want the first PTC to focus on that impediment.
Each PTC step is given a score. A score of 0 is the baseline, indicating a team's current approach, regardless of how advanced it is. Most PTCs will have a top score of 3, 4 or 5, meaning there are 3 to 5 steps on the way to the goal. The completion of each step should itself provide tangible value to the team beyond making partial progress to the final goal.
PTC values are meant to be ordinal, not cardinal. In other words, the values are not meant to indicate a global calibration of how well a team conducts a certain practices. Scores are used within a team to track progress. They should not be used to assess practices across teams.
- Coverage Testing Template: [PPTX Source] Sample card template for a team wanting to improve the fraction of its code that is tested. Statements should be customized and made precise for the team's goals.
- Source Management Template: [PPTX Source] Sample card template for a team wanting to introduce or improve source code management. Statements should be customized and made precise for the team's goals.
- Unit Testing Example: [PPTX Source] Example card taken from a project where the team was starting a refactoring effort and wanted to establish a comprehensive and sustainable unit testing capability.
