Ats Diary

The AtsDiary was an ongoing description of my (JimLittle) experiment with ExtremeProgramming on the ATS project. (For more information about the AtsProject and how it got started, see AtsGoesExtreme.)

The AtsProject started out using FeatureDrivenDevelopment. It was canceled, and then reborn a month later. In the second half, we used ExtremeProgramming. This part of the project lasted 8 weeks and two iterations. We started out with four people (including myself), quickly dropped to three, and then to two in the last iteration.

This was my first attempt at ExtremeProgramming. The diary is interesting, but don't take it as XP gospel.

Of the 12 ExtremeProgramming practices, we used 9.5 heavily:

The 2.5 remaining practices we didn't do:

And then there's a bunch of things that are related to ExtremeProgramming:

And then a couple that were my own invention.

(Note: The ATS-specific pages above were written at the beginning of the project, not the end. Most of them haven't been updated, but I've included them because I thought they might be interesting.)

Brief background (written when I started this diary; the schedule and people changed afterwards):

This is a quick one-iteration project to add security to ATS, a Java project that had been left unfinished six weeks before (see AtsGoesExtreme for details). There's four developers on the team: myself (JimLittle), 'Al', 'Steve', and 'Scott'. We're all contractors except for Al, who is an in-house developer at this company. I have extensive experience with ATS, Al has good experience with the ATS database, and the other two contractors have no experience with ATS at all. The project is officially watched over by 'Jared,' the company liaison, and unofficially watched over by the several user groups that are competing for features.

Here's my day-to-day notes about the project:

And here's the first six weekly status reports I sent to stakeholders: AtsStatusReports

And finally, the last diary entry:

6 May 2000

ATS Iteration 5 was released on May 3rd, on time and on budget. Positive feedback from all concerned so far. Management is very pleased. I'll post the final status reports as well as wrapping up and finalizing the ATS pages over the next month or so.

Thanks to all the people who read this diary. Thanks especially to those who took the time to sign the AtsGuestBook... your support kept this diary going. I hope the information was useful, or at least entertaining. :)

-- JimLittle

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