Back to proposals-2013

Title: Is eXtreme Programming still alive and kicking?
Proposer: rachel_davies
Type: Case Study
Duration: 45 minutes
Description: Back in 2000, I worked for 3 years as a Java developer at Connextra, one of the first companies trying eXtreme Programming in UK. If you've ever been asked to write stories using the “As a ..I want..so that..” way then blame us - we were also the originators of Mock Objects. Perhaps because of the scary moniker which implies a full-on approach, other agile approaches have become more popular across industry in subsequent years. It's interesting to note that no equivalent organisation to Scrum Alliance or Lean SSC exists that is dedicated to promoting XP and advancing the state of practice unless you count London's very own eXtreme Tuesday Club. XP has therefore become more of a grass roots approach for software developers with most organisations opting for much less extreme agile approaches although still pulling in milder XP practices such as user stories, velocity, and test-driven development.

I've worked as an independent consultant helping teams figure out how to apply Scrum in various context and seen some cool and crazy things done. In June 2012, I started work as a coach at Unruly Media, a company founded by some of the original team members at Connextra. Immediately before this, I also worked for Industrial Logic who built upon their own IndustrialXP method and re-evaluated many XP practices from a Lean perspective. Over the last year, I've found it really interesting to see how many old-school XP practices are still helping developers and where gaps remain (such as working with UX and Infra specialists). It's also been interesting to see how open our XP team is to “embracing change” and experimenting with ideas from Kanban and Scrum.

Come to this session  if you have an interest in hearing about current state of XP and how it's been evolving.

Jon: Rachel notes - I realise the above description is a bit on the long side but I think it might be interesting to talk about how XP has evolved over since it's inception 12+ years ago. Could even do this as a retrospective and involve audience in a fishbowl.
Roger: This sounds interesting.