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ExtremeProgramming

See also: ExtremeHour

The Extreme Programming (XP) methodology is a set of principles and practices for developing software. It has been described as a "high-discipline, low-overhead" methodology. XP has developers programming in pairs, writing tests to verify all code, and continuously refactoring code to improve the design. To quote Kent Beck: "XP is a starting line. It asks the question, 'How little can we do and still build great software?'"

news:comp.software.extreme-programming is a newsgroup for discussing this methodology.

XP minifaq: <>

XP FAQ: <http://www.jera.com/techinfo/xpfaq.html>

XP and related Books: [My comments in brackets]

[The original book, heavy on the justification / manifesto, too light on what you actually have to do. XP continues to evolve, this book didn't describe test-driven deveopment, the core of modern XP. I recommend other books, see below.]

[Strongly recommended. Refactoring can be dangerous without the support of automated tests.... This is a required part of test-driven development and XP.]

This is an outstanding book, in that it explains in detail how to do some of those things you've always done, but called "cleaning up the code." Provides checklists to help prevent forgetting a vital piece, incremental methods for making improvements, and some good philosophy-behind-refactoring. Everyone says you must have automated tests in place to do refactoring, and of course it's highly (highly!) preferable, but sometimes you have to refactor and you don't have tests. "Refactoring" helps even in that situation ;). - DavidPickett

[Recommended. A whole book on doing XP planning. Something you can give your Customer to read.]

[Strongly recommended. An example of test-driven development, and enough details on how to do XP to get you started.]

[Strongly recommended. Advice on adapting XP and persuading developers and managers to adopt it.]

[Introduction to Test Driven Design / Test First Programming, the core of XP. Can be used outside of XP, but then people might throw away your tests or change the code without keeping the tests passing. There are other books on TDD that I haven't read yet.]

Lucid, easy and quick to read, and does a good job of explaining-by-doing. There are a thousand sources for getting that good old TDD religion, but it's always nice to hear it from the horse's mouth, so to speak. - DavidPickett

[Strongly recommended. While ostensibly an addition to XP, this actually codifies and names the design activities an XP project would do.]

[Recommended. Explains assumptions and context of XP. The downside is that the author repeatedly asserts that XP can only be used in a narrow domain, without providing any persuasive evidence to support that assertion. In fact, that assertion ignores the wide variety of places that XP has been used successfully.]

[Papers and experience reports from a conference.]

[A rather introductory book, rather "practice these exercise" oriented.]

[An attempt to document an actual XP project, but this project didn't have automated acceptance testing, one of the practices most in need of examples and explanation.]

[Might be useful for Java developers. Not much about XP in here.]

[recommended. Strong points about communication being the base of agile methods.]

[Overview of XP, Scrum, Crystal, FDD, etc.]

[I found this hard to read because of the lack of concrete examples. Also the frequent use of the word "extreme" kept making me think about XP, which I'm sure wasn't the author's intention.] (I really liked this one, but I am not a developer and I think that I was looking for higher level information than Keith. SherryHeinze)

[The only book on Scrum, other than the Ecosystems book. XP's management practices ARE scrum, but with different names and emphasis. Despite this, many people have combined Scrum and XP in various ways.]

[Recommended people-skills for manager/coach/leader. Not specific to XP]

Extreme Programming: A Gentle Introduction <http://www.extremeprogramming.org/>

XP magazine:

XPlorations:

XP Universe 2001 Papers:

XP Test Frameworks:

Junit test framework for java:

Wiki Pages on XP: <http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?ExtremeProgrammingRoadmap>

The Agile Modeling (AM) Home Page <http://www.agilemodeling.com> <http://www.agilemodeling.com/essays/agileModelingXP.htm>

Martin Fowler's Refactoring Home Page <http://www.refactoring.com>

Object Mentor publications: <http://www.objectmentor.com/resources/articleIndex>

Pour des informations en fran�ais sur XP : <http://www.design-up.com>

L'eXtreme Programming, avec deux �tudes de cas. Jean-Louis B�nard, LaurentBossavit, R�gis M�dina, Dominic Williams Editions Eyrolles, 2002; ISBN: 2-212-11051-0 <http://www.eyrolles.com/php.informatique/Ouvrages/ouvrage.php3?ouv_ean13=9782212110517> <>

-- KeithRay

ExtremeProgrammingDiscussion

Happy birthday to you. - jb