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I agree with you and i also see the flip side of this: people who think you need to do 100% of XP techniques to be 100% XP. Whereas XP is supposed to be about d

I agree with you and i also see the flip side of this: people who think you need to do 100% of XP techniques to be 100% XP. Whereas XP is supposed to be about doing what's right for the situation

urbanetrellis 6y ago
I would argue it's doing what's right for the situation but with a few top level goals that should constantly be in view. - Simplicity: you should be creating simple designs / solutions - Feedback: you should be getting continuous feedback as to whether what you're doing is working and self-correcting - Courage/Communication/Respect: you should be fostering a collaborative environment where people feel free to tell the truth and feel they're respected as people and professionals The practices (pairing, TDD, etc.) are just a way of getting to those goals. You can follow any other disciplines you want, but if the end result doesn't look like what I just described (or if it isn't the explicit goal of your activities) then I don't think you're doing XP.
mikekchar 6y ago
The 12 practices of XP are not XP any more than a finger is not the thing that it is pointing to. XP is intended to be a minimal set of practices that generate a method. Rather than specify a method (which will dependent upon circumstances), XP specifies a set of practices which will hopefully help you discover the method. Having said that, if you are not doing the 12 practices, then you are not doing XP. You are doing something else. It's totally fine to do something else, but it is not XP. It may have been inspired by XP. That's also really great. But it is not XP. This is important because people talk about their experiences with XP and it is difficult to determine if their success (or lack thereof) is actually due to XP, or other factors. Do the 12 practices actually generate a method? Does it happen all the time? Is there something you have to do to get it to generate the method? Is the method always the same? There are many, many question. For most people, those questions are boring because they are not actually interested in XP. They are interested in being successful on the projects. This is a very understandable position to be in! However, it is frustrating for people who are interested in XP ;-)

I agree with you and i also see the flip side of this: people who think you need to do 100% of XP techniques to be 100% XP. Whereas XP is supposed to be about doing what's right for the situation

urbanetrellis 6y ago

I would argue it's doing what's right for the situation but with a few top level goals that should constantly be in view. - Simplicity: you should be creating simple designs / solutions - Feedback: you should be getting continuous feedback as to whether what you're doing is working and self-correcting - Courage/Communication/Respect: you should be fostering a collaborative environment where people feel free to tell the truth and feel they're respected as people and professionals The practices (pairing, TDD, etc.) are just a way of getting to those goals. You can follow any other disciplines you want, but if the end result doesn't look like what I just described (or if it isn't the explicit goal of your activities) then I don't think you're doing XP.

mikekchar 6y ago

The 12 practices of XP are not XP any more than a finger is not the thing that it is pointing to. XP is intended to be a minimal set of practices that generate a method. Rather than specify a method (which will dependent upon circumstances), XP specifies a set of practices which will hopefully help you discover the method. Having said that, if you are not doing the 12 practices, then you are not doing XP. You are doing something else. It's totally fine to do something else, but it is not XP. It may have been inspired by XP. That's also really great. But it is not XP. This is important because people talk about their experiences with XP and it is difficult to determine if their success (or lack thereof) is actually due to XP, or other factors. Do the 12 practices actually generate a method? Does it happen all the time? Is there something you have to do to get it to generate the method? Is the method always the same? There are many, many question. For most people, those questions are boring because they are not actually interested in XP. They are interested in being successful on the projects. This is a very understandable position to be in! However, it is frustrating for people who are interested in XP ;-)