An industry/academic partnership that worked: an in progress report

Although published reports indicate that collaboration between universities and industry can be beneficial to both, many companies are skeptical of such partnership because of the risk. This paper is a report on lessons learned and experiences gained, and results achieved thus far as the work is still in progress. Our efforts show that when there are shared and articulated goals with common expectations and consistent communication, positive results can be achieved. At the Motorola Paging Product Group (PPG), a team was organized to devise and implement a plan that will evaluate and incorporate effective personal software process (PSP) practices into Motorola PPG software development process. The team, a combination of industry practitioners and academic educators, first established a team process, then devised a plan and began implementation in order to achieve the stated goals.