Extreme Programming

September 13, 2007 by Artem Marchenko

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Extreme Programming often referred to as XP is probably the most known agile software development method. It is often considered being just a catalog of good practices exploited to the "extreme" level. However, extreme programming adepts often define the method not in terms of concrete practices, but rather in terms of permanent change guided by five values, fourteen principles and a number of practices known to be good in implementing these values and principles.

XP Values: Communication, Simplicity, Feedback, Courage, Respect.

XP Principles: Humanity, Economics, Mutual benefit, Self-similarity, Improvement, Diversity, Reflection, Flow, Opportunity, Redundancy, Failure, Quality, Baby steps, Accepted responsibility.

XP Primary Practices: Sit Together, Whole Team, Informative Workspace, Energized Work, Pair Programming, Stories, Weekly Cycle, Quarterly Cycle, Slack, Ten-Minute Build, Continuous Integration, Test-First Programming, Incremental Design

XP Corollary Practices: Real Customer Involvement, Incremental Deployment, Team Continuity, Shrinking Teams, Root Cause Analysis, Shared Code, Code and Tests, Single Code Base, Daily Deployment, Negotiated Scope Contract, Pay-per-use

It is indeed so that in many software development teams the change guided by these values and principles are effectively translated into getting into use more XP traditional practices such as Pair programming, Test driven development, Continuous integration or Small releases. Still it would be against the principle of Incremental change and value of Simplicity to try adopting many practices by the team new to agile methods - the team would be overwhelmed and practices would have little chance to become useful.

Further Links

• Good Wikipedia article
• A guided tour on eXtreme Programming
• eXtreme Programming FAQ
• http://www.xprogramming.com
• Active and friendly discussion group on eXtreme Programming
• Extreme Programming Explained (2nd edition) by Kent Beck and Cynthia Andres. - THE Extreme Programming book. A must read for everybody interested in XP (non-affiliated link)
• Extreme Planning Extreme Programming by Kent Beck and Martin Fowler. - Human language guide on implementing XP (non-affiliated link) 
• Extreme Programming Installed by Ron Jeffries, Ann Anderson, Chet Hendrickson and Ronald E. Jeffries. - Detailed explanation of the extreme programming development cycle (non-affiliated link)

Your experience

Which other "general" starting points would you recommend for learning about XP?

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