Extreme Programming and Flexible Processes in Software Engineering

Kent Beck, First Class Software

Linköping, September 26, 2000

From the cover of Extreme Programming Explained:

Software development projects can be fun, productive and even daring. Yet they can consistently deliver value to a business and remain under control.

Extreme Programming (XP) was conceived and developed to address the specific needs of software development conducted by small teams in the face of vague and changing requirements. This new lightweight methodology challenges many conventional tenets, including the long-held assumption that the cost of changing a piece of software necessarily rises dramatically over the course of time. XP recognizes that projects have to work to achive this reduction in cost and exploit the savings once they have been earned.

Fundamentals of XP include:

• Distinguishing between decisions to be made by business interests and those to be made by project stakeholders.
• Writing unit tests before programming and keeping all of the tests running at all times.
• Integrating and testing the whole system -- several times a day.
• Producing all software in pairs, two programmers at one screen.
• Starting projects with a simple design that constantly evolves to add needed flexibility and remove unneeded complexity.
• Putting a minimal system into production quickly and growing it in whatever directions prove most valuable.

Kent Beck has pioneered Extreme Programming and is the author of "Extreme Programming Explained", which is included in the seminar fee.

The seminar will cover the theory, practise and implementation of Extreme Programming. Several practical exercises are planned to give participants a feel for what Extreme Programming is and some of the benefits of this new methodology.

The seminar will be held in english.

Preliminary Schedule

NOTE: This is a preliminary schedule only. Although planned for 17:00, the seminar may end as late as 18:00.