Questioning Extreme Programming

A book by PeteMcBreen that attempts to examine objectively the strengths and weaknesses of ExtremeProgramming.

ISBN 0201844575

I'm quite surprised to find that there seems to have been no discussion on wiki of this book which contains one of the few systematic and intelligent examinations of XP in print. Most of the other books are either pushing XP or denouncing it. This book attempts to identify strengths and weaknesses of XP as a methodology and makes suggestions about what other methodologies can learn from XP. I especially like his emphasis on the idea that XP is not the ne plus ultra of methodology but just another plateau on the mountain. His conclusion is that XP is only applicable in a very narrow range of cases. He makes the rather obvious point that most projects are "carried out in suboptimal circumstances" and we should perhaps try to see if we can find ideas in XP that can help those people. After all people still have to develop software even if they're in an organisation that is allergic to agility. -- AdewaleOshineye

"ne plus ultra"??

His conclusion, as stated at the start and end of the book, is that XP is only applicable in a very narrow range of cases. However, it seemed to me that every argument he presented in the body of his book was that in all the cases for all the situations and problems he could think of, XP was the best solution.

(Maybe "software development by humans on the planet Earth" is a very narrow range of cases. ;-)

-- JeffGrigg

Not everything is on the wiki. You can find JeffLangr's review at http://www.xprogramming.com/xpmag/books20021009.htm

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