Martins Talk At Xp Immersion Two

MartinFowler drew regular geometric shapes on the board, claiming that they represented European contries. He then proceeded to tell us about two Harolds and a William who thought it would fun to fight wars to see who could control England. (This was at least partially a nod to RobertCecilMartin's habit of opening each classroom session with the CosmologyThread.)

Rather than launching into a formal talk, MartinFowler then posed for us the following question:

Suppose KentBeck wants to quit travelling, and stay at home in Merlin, Oregon. There are no other software people within 100 miles, and nobody from the outside particularly wants to fly in on a regular basis.

Which XP practices can Kent keep? Which practices will he have to give up? And at what cost? Are there other practices we can substitute for the missing ones to keep Kent productive at a level close to that of XP?

See Also: ExtremeProgrammingForOne

The biggest insight I got from this talk was when RonJeffries pointed out that the the biggest risk to software projects is not technological. The biggest risk is not delivering what the customer wants, and losing the customer's trust. This means that in absolute terms, the planning game is more important than pair programming. (Of course, it's still best to do both!) --JohnBrewer

I was very interested in this discussion. It seemed like a great way to come at many of the issues listed in the ExtremeProgrammingRoadmap under Applicability of: ExtremeProgramming such as ExtremeProgrammingBoundaryConditions . Martin did mention that his ulterior motive for this discussion was to help us understand why XP works the way it is. My perception was that this discussion generated more questions than answers.

So, I couldn't quit thinking about it and when I woke up Friday morning I had a glimmer of an idea. XP is a system of rules similar to a system of code it is meant to produce. Therefore, what is the right SystemMetaphor for XP? I thought this metaphor was clearly stated in KentsTalkAtXpImmersionTwo Wednesday night. Later, I was amazed that I couldn't find this ConversationMetaphor stated in the book or on Wiki. -- BruceWinegarden

CategoryExtremeProgramming