Extreme Programming (XP) at a Glance (Visual)

“Each of the practices still has the same weaknesses as before, but what if those weaknesses were now made up for by the strengths of other practices? We might be able to get away with doing things simply." – Kent Beck

Extreme Programming (XP) has been around a while, but not everybody knows “what it looks like.”

What does it look like when you step back and take the balcony view and observe the flow of things?

It might look a bit like this …

image

I put this view together to help some folks get an idea of what the “system” sort of looks like.  It didn’t need to be perfect, but they needed at least a baseline idea or skeleton so they could better understand how the various practices fit together.

The beauty is that once you put a simple picture up on the whiteboard, then you can have real discussions with the team about where things can be improved.  Once again, a picture is worth 1,000 words.

For reference, here are the 12 Practices of Extreme Programming

  1. Coding Standards
  2. Collective Ownership
  3. Continuous Integration
  4. On-Site Customer
  5. Pair Programming
  6. Planning Game
  7. Refactoring
  8. Short Releases
  9. Simple Design
  10. Sustainable Pace (40 Hour Week)
  11. System Metaphor
  12. Test-Driven Development

The main idea here is to get simple visuals in your mind that you can easily draw on a whiteboard, and know the names of the various activities and artifacts. 

If you nail this down, it helps you build a simple vocabulary. 

This vocabulary will help you get others on board faster, and it will help you expand your own toolbox at a rapid rate, and you’ll soon find yourself composing new methods and creating interesting innovations in your process that will help you do things better, faster, and cheaper … on Cloud time.

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