Csee Transport

CSEE Transport is a French company that makes automatic train control systems, from trackside hardware to central control room software.

We first used XP on an 8 person project developing a metro supervision system. The system is soft real time and distributed, developed using C++ and libraries from ILOG.

XP was definitely a bit of a revolution here, but management were convinced to try it because of the promise of higher productivity and because of the high emphasis on RelentlessTesting (we develop safety-critical systems).

That project started in January 2000, and the original scope was finished essentially on time and budget some 18 months later. The project continued with extensions and maintenance, with a reduced team. The project was quite successful. Developers were delighted with XP, managers were interested largely because it made developers happy and also because they got good quality reporting. The main problems were blamed on not having an OnsiteCustomer and not having AcceptanceTests.

We thus tried to improve this on a second project (a command/control system for a high speed railway section), by having a person playing the role of proxy Customer and Tester, and automating AcceptanceTests from the outset (including the GUI, which was driven and verified by Python scripts via CORBA and using some event handling tools from the GUI library).

This second project was not a success (globally, not just the part done with XP). The point of view of the team was that, considering the circumstances, we were doing extremely well, and XP was very much appreciated. The point of view of upper management was that we, and XP, could conveniently be blamed for everything, because we had chosen to be different. I was asked to leave the project and to quit introducing new ideas. I decided to quit altogether. Just in case you wondered, that did not solve their problems, by any measure.

-- DominicWilliams

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