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The Agile Manifesto is one of the more important documents in software development, rivaling Royce's paper in influence. This is true, even though the Manifesto is far less than a single page!
Extreme Programming is the antithesis of the previous methodologies. When it first came out, it was considered a new way of software development. Extreme Programming introduces the concepts of values, principles, activities, and practices.
Plan to Throw One Away
In this chapter, Brooks covers many topics. The one most relevant to our discussion this week has to do with prototyping (pp. 116-118). You may also want to read about the dual ladder of advancement (Fig. 11.1) which is common in many organizations today and the notion of regression is very important.
F. Brooks,
Chapter 11: Plan to Throw One Away.
The Mythical Man-Month : Essays on Software Engineering, Anniversary Edition
Hatching a Catastrophe
In many ways, the Agile family of software development methodologies are all about managing risk. In this essay, Brooks discusses the negative risk of a schedule slip. See if you can relate the principles of risk management discussed in the Agile and XP articles with the problems and solutions Brooks mentions.
F. Brooks,
Chapter 14: Hatching a Catastrophe.
The Mythical Man-Month : Essays on Software Engineering, Anniversary Edition
Manifesto for Agile Software Development
Calling this an article is a bit of a stretch. Probably the biggest misconception about the Manifesto is their four value points. Each value point consists of two parts: the important first part and the less important second part. At no point do the authors state that the second part is not important!
K. Beck et al., "Manifesto for Agile Software Development," [Online] Available: http://agilemanifesto.org/
Principles behind the Agile Manifesto
As with the Manifesto itself, the description of the principles are extremely broad and non-specific. They are like a politician making campaign promises: difficult to argue with but lacking any real details. That being said, every aspect of the SCRUM methodology should be traceable to one or more of these principles.
K. Beck et al., "Principles behind the Agile Manifesto," [Online] Available: http://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html
Extreme Programming and its Development Practices
The first thing to realize about Extreme Programming (XP) is that there is nothing new about XP. All the XP practices have been used long before XP and all the principles are espoused in other methodologies. XP is different because it takes these practices to the extreme (hence the name).
Pay special attention to the practices at the bottom of page 99. This really is the core of XP. Each practice by itself has very interesting implications for the software development process. Taken together, it is easy to see how it can be quite different than the other methodologies we have learned up to this point.
R. Juric, "Extreme Programming and its Development Practices"
22nd Int. Conf. Information Technology ITI 2000, Jun. 2000
[Online] Available:
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=915842&tag=1
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