9804010 Project LEAP investigates the use of lightweight, empirical, anti-measurement dysfunction, and portable approaches to software developer improvement. A lightweight method involves a minimum of process constraints, is relatively easy to learn, is amenable to integration with existing methods and tools, and requires only minimal management investment and commitment. An empirical method supports measurements that can lead to improvements in the software developers skill. Measurement dysfunction refers to the possibility of measurements being used against the programmer, so the method must take care to collect and manipulate measurements in a ``safe'' manner. A portable method is one that can be applied by the developer across projects, organizations, and companies during her career. Project LEAP evaluates the strengths and weaknesses of this approach by creating a LEAP-compliant toolset and method for process data entry and analysis. The toolset and method will be experimentally evaluated at a number of industry sites, and used to explore the effects of the toolkit on the quality of empirical data collected by the Personal Software Process. Web- based materials for distance-based education on empirical software engineering will be deployed using the toolset.***
