Xp Immersion Training Comments

You can find comments specific to XpImmersionOne or XpImmersionTwo by reading those pages.

Wow. I can't tell you guys what a great time I'm having here at the course. I've learned more in the two evening sessions with Beck and Jeffries than we did in all the previous weeks we've been trying to "do" XP...

One question though, how did RobertCecilMartin come to be involved in XP ?

The following paragraph explains that well, but I'll tell you in my own words. We, at Object Mentor, had been using a lightweight process for years. It was not XP, but was very similar in spirit (i.e. the values and principles) I was going to write about this process until I read what Kent had been up to with XP. It fit so well with what we had been doing that it made no sense for me to write about a competing process. Rather than confuse the industry, I felt it would be far better to help Kent refine and promote XP.

You're at the course, so just ask him. I'm at the course also and I've heard him answer the question a few times. In essence, Robert and Kent have shared many of the same values. When Kent started talking about XP, Robert felt that it really resonanted with the pragmatic, engineer in the trenches approach that Robert has been practicing over the years. I don't think it took much convincing.

How did the class go? I would like to here some feedback. I wanted to show up but my peers were not sure if we ( my company ) need hands on XP training. They suggested that I should read the books "ExtremeProgrammingExplainedEmbraceChange" and "RefactoringImprovingTheDesignOfExistingCode" and I'll be able to XP just like that!

I have to say that that is exactly what my team did. I don't think it takes training if you have a whole team that decides its fundamental team spirit is going to be defined by XP and doing it right. -- JeffBay

I went to the class instead of reading the books (well, I did read them later). It was fantastic. A lot of things started to come together and make sense immediately. I loved the ExtremeHour, which gave us an instant snapshot of the XP process. We could be talking about it for days, and still not have a clue. Instead, we simply did it.

The training was executed as an XP project. By attending it you learn about XP, you try XP, AND you see how others do it. You won't get that from the books!

At our company there are people who have only read the books. Some of them are quite enthusiastic about the process. But I see them selecting and applying some of the practices forgetting about the rest. You are less likely to make that mistake having experienced it.

So the bottom line is, don't think about it, do it!

The class was a combination of lecture and hands-on usually split by lunch. Robert, Kent, Martin, or Ron would speak about their experiences with XP and discuss its evolution and what it takes to make it effective. In the afternoons we broke up into development teams of 6 people. Each team had a customer who specified a product they wanted (a simple check book manager in our case). Kent, Robert, Martin, Ron, and some other Object Mentor folks circulated as coaches and assisted each team with actually doing XP. We did the Planning Game working with our customer and Iteration Planning (given the compressed nature of the seminar we worked in hours rather than weeks or days). We then paired off and developed the application in Java on the provided workstations (NT 4.0 workstation using the Kawa Java IDE - the machines were woefully underpowered and ObjectMentor vows to correct that next time). It was very interesting getting into the dynamics of the tight feedback loops and pair programming.

I think the most frequent answer I heard a coach give to any question during the week was "Why?". The second most frequent answer was "Why not?". <Don't forget about Kent's "Okay".> We're all encumbered with "the rules" of development where we work that we forget what the goal is. The Bill of Rights are very important to the process.

In the evenings, from around 7:00 to whenever the beer ran out, Robert, Kent, Martin, and Ron took turns hosting various discussions about their experiences. Very informal and a great opportunity to pick their brains. Each of them is a very engaging and entertaining speaker. The last night, Robert discussed how XP fits with his OOD principles - this was probably the most fun I've ever had a conference.

I could go on with more detail if anyone is interested ...

Michael C. Bomkamp (mcbomkamp@aol.com)

The class was incredible! We came away with great hands on experience and there was always someone there to answer all of our questions. It was great to be able to talk with everyone about XP and software in general.(students and teachers) There was a lot of software experience holed up in one (huge) room for a week. Don't miss out on the next class. ObjectMentor did a great job ... and Uncle Bob tells great stories!

We started a small XP project this week. I am the acting customer and Mike(Schneider ... from the Rooster Team) is the Coach. You should have seen the look on the developer's face when I explained that his time estimates were his to own and I couldn't nitpick him about it. Once he got over the initial shock, he was very excited. We just finished choosing which stories to implement for the first iteration, so we are ready to go. I'll let you know how it goes.

Mark Strecker (Rooster Team)

I went to XP Immersion V thinking I was going to learn some techniques and practices. Instead I got (at least, I hope I got) the understanding from which the techniques and practices are derived. It's the difference between memorizing a formula and understanding the proof. If you forget the formula, you're sunk. If you understand the proof, you can recreate the formula any time (and perhaps even invent new ones).

The guest speakers -- Martin Fowler, Craig Larman, and Alistair Cockburn -- brought extra depth and insight to the class. And all of the speakers showed the humor and humanity that underlies what XP is about. -- WayneConrad

CategoryAdoptingXp CategoryExtremeProgramming