eXtreme Programming: Days of future past
Going back, maybe ten years ago, when I first read Kent Becks Extreme Programming I found it compelling. Most of the practices made immediate intuitive sense. I especially liked the practices: coding standards, unit testing, refactoring, continuous integration, collective code ownership, code reviews and maintaining a sustainable pace. They are now engrained in the way we operate. What was appealing about them was that they were directly applicable to the practice of programming. I could and did begin adopting them in some part as an individual to develop my own development skills, quality and productivity. There was no need for a formal organizational structure or project management philosophy overhaul required in order to just start doing some of the practices and benefitting from the discipline. Extreme programming is a methodology as the name implies, for programmers. Later, as I became more aware of broader Agile, the myriad of Agile practices felt like watered down versi