EXTREME PROGRAMMING AGILE PROJECT MANAGEMENT ADVISORY SERVICE WHITE PAPER by Jim Highsmith CUTTER CONSORTIUM PRACTICE AREAS: à Distributed Architecture à Business-IT Strategies à Business Intelligence à Business Technology Trends and Impacts à Project Management à IT Management à Sourcing CUTTER CONSORTIUM, 37 BROADWAY, SUITE 1, ARLINGTON, MA 02474-5552, USA; Tel: +1 781 648 8700; Fax: +1 781 648 8707; [email protected]; www.cutter.com CUTTER CONSORTIUM ABOUT THE CUTTER CONSORTIUM Cutter Consortiums mission is to help senior executives leverage technology for competitive advantage and business success. Cutters offerings are entirely unique in the research/analyst industry sector because they are produced and provided by the top thinkers in IT today a distinguished group of internation- ally recognized experts committed to providing high-level, critical advice and guidance. 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FOR MORE INFORMATION To learn more about the Cutter Consortium, call +1 800 964 5118 (toll-free in North America) or +1 781 648 8700, send e-mail to [email protected], or visit the Cutter Consortium Web site: www.cutter.com. Extreme Programming [This article orginally appeared in the February 2000 edition of Cutter Consortiums e-Business Application Delivery newsletter, now titled the Agile Project Management Advisory Service.] by Jim Highsmith As we have explored in several most staid organization, it is then rather than thinking and therefore issues of eAD, the two most press- that we must examine every aspect results in low quality. This is an ing issues in information technology of how business is managed, cus- easy way to dismiss practices that today are: tomers are delighted, and products conflict with ones own assump- are developed. tions about the world. à How do we deliver functionali- The Extreme Programming move- Looked at another way, XP may be ty to business clients quickly? ment has been a subset of the a potential piece of a puzzle Ive object-oriented (OO) programming been writing about over the past 18 à How do we keep up with near-continuous change? community for several years, but months. Turbulent times give rise has recently attracted more atten- to new problems that, in turn, give Change is changing. Not only does tion, especially with the recent rise to new practices new prac- the pace of change continue to release of Kent Becks new book tices that often fly in the face of accelerate, but, as the September Extreme Programming Explained: conventional wisdom but survive issue of eAD pointed out, organiza- Embrace Change. Dont be put off because they are better adapted to tions are having to deal with differ- by the somewhat in-your-face the new reality. There are at ent types of change disruptive moniker of Extreme Programming least four practices I would assign change and punctuated equilibrium. (XP to practitioners). Although to this category: Disruptive technologies, like personal Beck doesnt claim that practices computers in the early 1980s, impact such as pair programming and à XP the focus of this issue an industry (in the case of PCs, incremental planning originated several related industries), while a with XP, there are some very inter- à Lean development dis- punctuated equilibrium a massive esting, and I think important, con- cussed in the November 1998 intervention into an ecosystem or an cepts articulated by XP. Theres a issue of eAD economy impacts a very large lot of talk today about change, but number of species, or companies. XP has some pretty good ideas à Crystal Light methods men- The Internet, which has become about how to actually do it. Hence tioned in the November 1999 the backbone for e-commerce and the subtitle, Embrace Change. issue of eAD and further dis- e-business, has disrupted a wide cussed in this issue There is a tendency, particularly by range of industries more a punc- rigorous methodologists, to dismiss à Adaptive software develop- tuated equilibrium than a disruption. anything less ponderous than the ment described in the When whole business models are Capability Maturity Model (CMM) August 1998 issue of eAD changing, when time-to-market or maybe the International (then called Application becomes the mantra of companies, Organization for Standardizations Development Strategies when flexibility and interconnected- standards, as hacking. The conno- ADS) ness are demanded from even the tation: hacking promotes doing Although there are differences in 4 AGILE PROJECT MANAGEMENT ADVISORY SERVICE each of these practices, there are claims. For example, both are clear ed to know. Ive been involved in also similarities: they each describe about XPs applicability to small enough rapid application develop- variations from the conventional (less than 10 people), co-located ment (RAD) projects for large IT wisdom about how to approach teams (with which they have direct organizations over the years to software development. Whereas experience); they dont try to con- understand why success does not lean and adaptive development vince people that the practices will consistently translate into accep- practices target strategic and pro- work for teams of 200. tance. There are always at least a ject management, XP brings its dif- hundred very good reasons why fering world view to the realm of The Project success at RAD, or XP, or lean the developer and tester. development, or other out-of-the- The most prominent XP project box approaches doesnt translate Much of XP is derived from good reported on to date is the Chrysler into wider use but more on this practices that have been around for Comprehensive Compensation sys- issue later. a long time. None of the ideas in tem (the C3 project) that was initiat- XP are new. Most are as old as pro- ed in the mid-1990s and converted Practices gramming, Beck offers to readers to an XP project in 1997. Jeffries, in the preface to his book. I might one of the Three Extremoes (with One thing to keep in mind is that XP differ with Beck in one respect: Beck and Ward Cunningham), and I practices are intended for use with although the practices XP uses spent several hours talking about small, co-located teams. They arent new, the conceptual founda- the C3 project and other XP issues therefore tend toward minimalism, tion and how they are melded at the recent Miller Freeman at least as far as artifacts other than together greatly enhance these Software Developer conference in code and test cases are concerned. older practices. I think there are Washington, DC, USA. The presentation of XPs practices four critical ideas to take away from have both positive and negative Originally, the C3 project was con- XP (in addition to a number of aspects. At one level, they sound ceived as an OO programming pro- other good ideas): like rules do this, dont do that. ject, specifically using Smalltalk. Beck explains that the practices are Beck, a well-known Smalltalk more like guidelines than rules, à The cost of change expert, was called in to consult on guidelines that are pliable depend- Smalltalk performance optimi- ing on the situation. However, à Refactoring zation, and the project was trans- some, like the 40-hour week, can formed into a pilot of OO (XP) prac- Collaboration come off as a little preachy. Jeffries à tices after the original project was makes the point that the practices deemed unreclaimable. Beck à Simplicity also interact, counterbalance, and brought in Jeffries to assist on a reinforce each other, such that pick- more full-time basis, and Jeffries But first, I discuss some XP basics: ing and choosing which to use and the dozen practices that define XP. worked with the C3 team until which to discard can be tricky. spring 1999. The initial require- ments were to handle the monthly The planning game. XPs planning XP The Basics payroll of some 10,000 salaried approach mirrors that of most itera- I must admit that one thing I like employees. The system consists of tive RAD approaches to projects. about XPs principal figures is their approximately 2,000 classes and Short, three-week cycles, frequent lack of pretension. XP proponents 30,000 methods and was ready updates, splitting business and tech- are careful to articulate where they within a reasonable tolerance peri- nical priorities, and assigning sto- think XP is appropriate and where it od of the planned schedule. ries (a story defines a particular feature requirement and is dis- is not. While practitioners like Beck As we talked, I asked Jeffries how played in a simple card format) all and Ron Jeffries may envision that success on the C3 project translated define XPs approach to planning. XP has wider applicability, they are into XP use on other Chrysler IT generally circumspect about their projects. His grin told me all I need- Extreme Programming. ©2002 by Cutter Consortium. All rights reserved. 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