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Xtreme Programming / Agile Development and Documentation
Subject:Xtreme Programming / Agile Development and Documentation From:Geoff Hart <ghart -at- videotron -dot- ca> To:TECHWR-L <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com> Date:Sat, 19 Nov 2005 09:12:45 -0500
I have no direct experience with this, but my relatively shallow
reading about Xtreme programming (see, for instance,
www.extremeprogramming.org/) suggests that when it works, it works
because the designers are using yet another variant of Alan Cooper's
"personas" concept to carefully figure out what they want to do rather
than making it up as they go. Among other things, this focuses more
direclty on the user and limits creeping featuritis.
This is not rocket science: it's akin to telling your architect that
you want one bathroom on each level of the house, then providing
details (e.g., the upstairs one should be an ensuite) rather than the
traditional software development model of "house building" which might
be akin to the following architectural instructions: Here are a bunch
of cool things we want that nobody will use. Oh yeah--put in the usual
house stuff. Like we should probably throw in at least one bathroom
somewhere, but if we run out of time, don't worry; it's expendable. The
important thing is that it looks cool.
Another key characteristic of Xtreme programming is that programmers
work together to examine algorithms and code before, during, and after
implementing the code, which makes the code come together faster
because there's quality control (reality checks) at every step in the
process, so that many (perhaps most) bugs are eliminated early on
rather than being left to fester. The goal is to make it work, then
figure out elegant optimizations later. Again, not rocket science.
Needless to say, like any simple and sensible approach, it now has a
new name and the gleam of shiny new stainless steel. (Think
"Information Mapping" and you'll get the idea: common sense that most
educated professionals already know, but packaged in such a way that it
suddenly becomes easy to follow that common sense. That's arguably a
very good thing.) Like most other great ideas, Xtreme has undoubtedly
been widely misunderstood by pointy-haired managers and perverted by
ill-informed and ill-considered marketing schemes. But the principles
seem very sound, and are worth investigating.
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