Library

XP

What is XP in Project Management?

Extreme Programming (or XP) is a software engineering methodology (and a form of agile software development) prescribing a set of daily stakeholder practices that embody and encourage particular XP values (below). Proponents believe that exercising these practices - traditional software engineering practices taken to so - called "extreme" levels - leads to a development process that is more responsive to customer needs ("agile") than traditional methods, while creating software of better quality.

Proponents of XP and agile methodologies in general regard ongoing changes to requirements as a natural, inescapable and desirable aspect of software development projects; they believe that adaptability to changing requirements at any point during the project life is a more realistic and better approach than attempting to define all requirements at the beginning of a project and then expending effort to control changes to the requirements.

Extreme Programming is a discipline of software development based on values of simplicity, communication, feedback, and courage. It works by bringing the whole team together in the presence of simple practices, with enough feedback to enable the team to see where they are and to tune the practices to their unique situation.

Planning

• User stories are written.
• Release planning creates the schedule.
• Make frequent small releases.
• The Project Velocity is measured.
• The project is divided into iterations.
• Iteration planning starts each iteration.
• Move people around.
• A stand-up meeting starts each day.
• Fix XP when it breaks.

Designing

• Simplicity.
• Choose a system metaphor.
• Use CRC cards for design sessions.
• Create spike solutions to reduce risk.
• No functionality is added early.
• Refactor whenever and wherever possible.

Coding

• The customer is always available.
• Code must be written to agreed standards.
• Code the unit test first.
• All production code is pair programmed.
• Only one pair integrates code at a time.
• Integrate often.
• Use collective code ownership.
• Leave optimization till last.
• No overtime.

Testing

• All code must have unit tests.
• All code must pass all unit tests before it can be released.
• When a bug is found tests are created.
• Acceptance tests are run often and the score is published.

for more details please visit www.extremeprogramming.org/