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Extreme Programming
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Extreme Programming (XP) is a software engineering methodology, the most prominent of several agile software development methodologies. Like other agile methodologies, Extreme Programming differs from traditional methodologies primarily in placing a higher value on adaptability than on predictability. Proponents of XP regard ongoing changes to requirements as an often natural and often inescapable aspect of software development projects; they believe that being able to adapt to changing requirements at any point during the project life is a more realistic and better approach than attempting to define all requirements at the beginning of a project and then expending effort to control changes to the requirements.
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Extreme Programming teams are in it for the long term. They work hard, and at a pace that can be sustained indefinitely. This means that they work overtime when it is effective, and that they normally work in such a way as to maximize productivity week in and week out. It's pretty well understood these days that death march projects are neither productive nor produce quality software. XP teams are in it to win, not to die.
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During the late 1990's word of Extreme Programming spread, initially through descriptions on newsgroups and Ward Cunningham's wiki, where Kent and Ron Jeffries (a colleague at C3) spent a lot of time explaining and debating the various ideas. Finally a number of books were published towards the end of the 90's and start of 00's that went into some detail explaining the various aspects of the approach. Most of these books took Kent Beck's white book as their foundation. Kent produced a second edition of the white book in 2004 which was a significant re-articulation of the approach.
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Extreme Programming does not mean programming naked while rollerblading down the side of the Grand Canyon. It does mean a new approach to software development that is both radical and common-sense. Unlike many software development methodologies, XP has been accepted quickly because its core practices--particularly code sharing, test-first development, and continuous integration--resonated immediately with software developers everywhere. Instead of impressing developers with a body of theory, XP got programmers to say, "Yeah, that's how I'd like to work."
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Extreme Programming is obsessed with feedback, and in software development, good feedback requires good testing. Top XP teams practice "test-driven development", working in very short cycles of adding a test, then making it work. Almost effortlessly, teams produce code with nearly 100 percent test coverage, which is a great step forward in most shops. (If your programmers are already doing even more sophisticated testing, more power to you. Keep it up, it can only help!)
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Extreme Programming (XP) was created in response to problem domains whose requirements change. Your customers may not have a firm idea of what the system should do. You may have a system whose functionality is expected to change every few months. In many software environments dynamically changing requirements is the only constant. Does this sound like your last Internet project? This is when XP will succeed while other methodologies do not.
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