Extreme Hour With Peter Merel

We presented an ExtremeHour at the March 28 Society for Software Quality (SSQ) meeting. Our project was to develop a gardening robot for home use. In general this worked well, but we ran out of time and didn't get to do the second iteration. Observations:

• the gardening robot cried out for refactoring. Unlike our mousetrap this one was all different solutions slapped together. The ExtremeHour doesn't allocate any explicit time for refactoring, and I think that's a mistake. There should be a ten minute increment at least after the first iteration to show how this is done.
• I tried to involve the audience by making them customers, and having a "product manager" elicit stories, priorities and qualities from them. This worked part way - it really involved the audience, but it also ate a lot of time. I'd do it again ... but I think I'd have the coach/presenter do the product managing bit. Two meeting coordinators is too confusing.
• I had each pair use one pen, and swap it back and forth to demonstrate pairing. Each pen was a different color, and the result was handy, but it would have been handier still if we'd had a refactoring color ...
• In future I don't think I'd try to do an ExtremeHour in under 2 real hours. There are necessary questions and expositions that are too hard to do. Certainly if the presentation is expanded to include a refactoring increment it'll fill 2 hours, easy.

I'll put the powerpoint slides we used for this one online shortly. --PeterMerel

Writing the UserStories on two large sheets of paper was easy, but manipulating the result was a maintenance hassle (kind of like real life). Next time bring a stack of 6 by 18 inch strips of Bristol Board, and write each story on one. Then sort the stack by customer priority, chop it into two iterations, and sort each one by risk. --PCP

Yah. Good Idea. GiantStoryCards. --PM

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PeterMerel and PhilipCraigPlumlee discussed two relevant issues during a well-received and only slightly rowdy ExtremeHour. (The Mac-Guffin was a robot that performs domestic gardening. Its Number One Requirement was "Don't kill children or pets.")

The first was WikiSucks. The pamphlet ExtremeProgrammingExplainedEmbraceChange models the only way to perform XpEvangelism. Do not point this Web site out to anyone who knows little or nothing about XP, whether they want to learn or not. This site is for the insiders to cultivate our insideness. (Oh, yeah - and advance the state of the art...)

The second issue was an excellent excuse for PairProgramming, "the most controversial principle on the list". --> the BasketballMetaphor.