I too have worked at a place that took XP very seriously, and it worked very well. For us, the way it fell apart was the interface to upper management. Upper

I too have worked at a place that took XP very seriously, and it worked very well. For us, the way it fell apart was the interface to upper management. Upper management didn't want to hear about story points and picking the most compelling features for a release. They wanted to see normal development plans and progress reports. They felt like we couldn't be under control if we were developing in an XP way. It's not that we failed to deliver. It's not that we were behind schedule. It's that upper management wasn't comfortable. By the way, one of the things we did was to hack our own process. (If you're trying to be agile by a rigidly defined process, you're not agile.) So a couple of the leaders would talk for a bit, and then they would say, "For the next two sprints, we're going to try changing the process in X way. After two sprints, we'll reevaluate." Drive toward a process that fits your team.